


Tomorrow We Make Our Apologies, Tonight We Make Our Move

by Marasa



Category: RedLetterMedia RPF
Genre: Angst, Emotional Sex, Fluff, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, M/M, Protectiveness, References to Depression, Scent Kink, Secret Relationship, Strangers to Lovers, Survivor AU, tropical island
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:22:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29387658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marasa/pseuds/Marasa
Summary: Jay, down on his luck and feeling trapped in the icy wasteland of Milwaukee, decides to take one of the biggest chances of his life when he applies for the  greatest social experiment ever conducted.A million dollars awaits him; thirty-nine days is all it will take.Outwit. Outplay. Outlast.
Relationships: Mike/Jay
Comments: 11
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> One of my ‘things’ is RLM. Another (bigger) one of my things is Survivor, the television show. So I’ve brought them together in this fic.
> 
> If you’ve never seen Survivor or know nothing about it or don’t really care—that’s okay. I wrote this fic to be accessible for those without any prior knowledge of the game, and honestly there’s a lot more to this story than just the gameplay. This fic can easily be read as a kind of tropical island AU, just with more deception, betrayal, budding romances, falling in love, rainy days and cold nights.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> (Title taken from one of the most iconic lines in Survivor history)

Sunlight sparkled upon blue ocean waves. The golden light not set out to sea draped itself lazily over Jay’s shoulders and burned the tops of his ears. His athletic sneakers gave no insight to the silky softness of the sand beneath him, but he’d have plenty of time to sift his toes through it later.

Jay squinted past the headache-inducing brightness on the horizon and found no semblance of his measly little life in Wisconsin. 

This time a month ago, he had been shit-faced drunk and eating pizza on his dirty kitchen floor. He’d just been laid off; the VCR business was a dying business, and Jay was yet another victim of capitalist society in which long hours at low-paying jobs guaranteed nothing more than a barely-there existence in a dingy apartment.

He had finished his pizza and downed yet another beer before stumbling his way over to the sofa. He couldn’t remember what his initial intention had been when he opened up his laptop, maybe trolling for dick or blowing his last paycheck on some collector’s edition Blu-Ray boxset he didn’t need. But advertised in the sidebar of this film trivia website he was opened on, an opportunity to participate in the world’s greatest social experiment, one that just so happened to guarantee a winning prize of one million dollars. 

Reality television—how embarrassing. Didn’t they script all those shows anyway?

Jay’s ex had been big into reality television. The Bachelor was a big favorite of hers and absolute hell for Jay from what he had seen. Big Brother was another one, which seemed even worse. These shows spoke less of ‘good television’ and more of the harshness of Hollywood producers employing human torture for entertainment. 

Jay didn’t know this one, not really. _Survivor_. He thought he might have heard about it? Once, twice? He did a quick search and found that the aforementioned show was the origin of the saying, “The tribe has spoken,” which now that he thought about it, was something his fifth grade teacher used to say a lot.

He had always thought that saying had been a Mr. Salazar-original. 

Drunk Jay shook his fist, beer foam crawling up the neck of the bottle in his grip; _damn you, Mr. Salazar!_

Jay had nothing better to do so he delved a little deeper into the workings of this game. Twenty strangers compete for one million dollars. Win challenges—obstacle courses, tests of endurance, puzzles—and the player is awarded safety in the game. Lose these challenges, and the player risks being voted out by their peers.

Bye-bye million dollar dream. Book closed. End of the road. 

Jay smirked. “Not too difficult,” he said, but it came out more like, “Nah too— _hic!_ —difcult.”

The show was shot predominantly in Fiji now; that was appealing, especially to someone like Jay who had never left the United States. He hadn’t even seen the ocean before. Fiji could be his taste of a world he was not a part of and winning would solve all of his financial woes.

Thirty-nine days was all it would take. 

Outwit. Outplay. Outlast.

And for someone without much worthwhile in his life, little to no memorable experiences after thirty-one years of existence and dwindling monetary funds, it didn’t look all that bad.

Rational Jay kicked and screamed in the backseat of his consciousness but Drunk Jay was at the wheel, opening up the application and filling in all the technicalities asked of him as if on auto-pilot. On the short answer questions, he rambled most incoherently and embarrassingly honest. He might have just wanted someone to talk to, and those six black lines under a bold-face question asking his best and worst attributes looked like momentary relief.

Jay had only applied as some sort of sad joke. He never actually thought he’d be accepted onto the show.

It was all a blur. One moment he was in dreary Wisconsin where nothing ever happened and then he was on a white sand beach in Fiji with nineteen strangers. 

No one from back home knew where he was. They wouldn’t even imagine; Jay was here and he barely believed it. But no one from home would be watching. No one in his daily life really knew him at all. When he had moved to Milwaukee as a kid after his parents’ divorce, Jay remembered grasping to the hope that he would be able to reinvent himself, be someone other than the friendless, crybaby geek he had been in Wausau. He had great expectations for himself. Like an actor in a movie, he would be someone else as soon as he stepped on this stage called ‘Milwaukee.’ He would no longer be ‘Jay,’ but would be someone who liked sports and who hated being different and who wouldn’t mind selling his soul for a little acceptance from his peers.

But the divorce had been traumatic for him—though he had difficulty admitting this to himself—and he hadn’t been able to battle against his old ways of hyperfixation in all things horror and sci-fi. His history of bullying and alienation repeated itself. Add in a total withdrawal from his family and a detached worldview, and now that was a really hard thing to shake. 

Apathy was just so cozy. 

“Welcome to another season of Survivor.” The show’s host, Jeff, stood ahead of them in khaki shorts and a blue button down. He smiled devilishly at the new crop of players under the shade cast by his black baseball cap.

They were divided into two teams, or tribes, and provided a tube of brightly-colored elastic fabric to mark their affiliation.

That old need to reinvent himself struck Jay suddenly as he looked down at the apple green piece of clothing, called a buff, in his hand. He could literally be anyone to these people. He could have an actual career, one that he loved with his entire being. He could be financially comfortable and well-traveled. He could be straight—imagine that—and in love with a beautiful woman he’d met in college. He could be someone’s fiance. 

He could have a lot to live for.

Jay slipped his buff onto his head and fixed it over his forehead like a headband. He stood up straighter.

Pretending to be someone he wasn’t—what a waste that would be. Because maybe, just maybe, being himself this time could be an asset to him. 

* * *

After two full days of living in the lush wilderness of Fiji, Jay had yet to be handed a script, so he guessed it was legit. 

Jay along with nine strangers, called Sundarata together, had been deserted on an uninhabited beach at a nearby island. White sand led into dense jungle, holding within a shady mystery seeming rather dangerous. They were provided only with a machete, a clay pot full of dry rice, one flint and a cooking pot. Jay waited for some kind of further guidance from production but received nothing but the depressing image of a clean white boat hauling ass off on the ocean without ever looking back.

A lot was proving to be uncomfortably real. He was kind of hoping the show was secretly manufactured but there was no air-conditioned trailer to escape to when the day got too hot, no fluffy blanket to wrap himself up in when the temperature plummeted at night.

Sundarata constructed a shelter of bamboo. This was probably the first project Jay had completed in eight years, artistic or otherwise. It was strangely rewarding to look upon a structure like that and be able to point out the specific areas he had worked on. He did so every time he caught it in his eyeline; he had tied one of the knots at the back of the shelter, and no one had helped him. 

It was his achievement and no one could take it from him. 

Jay was slowly waking. He had been dozing with his eyes open in Milwaukee but the world proved to be bright outside of that icy hellscape. 

As a child, Jay had dreamed of cameras in Hollywood, usually with himself behind them, sometimes standing in front of them. Either way, he imagined he was making it in the film scene in the most influential place in the entertainment industry. 

This was way different. 

The reality of reality television was no reality at all. Just spooky.

The cameras circled like vultures, always quiet and always watching. This extreme attentiveness was initially shocking but Jay became quickly desensitized to their constant presence; he was beginning to regard them as pests no different than mosquitos or flies, only this time they were big enough to cast a shadow on whatever he was working on when they came too close.

When these cameras had their eventual fill, they’d go off to the editing bay where a narrative would be unearthed in the hours upon hours of footage. Someone would be the hero. Someone would be the villain. Someone would be the underdog. Someone would be the fool. 

All television shows had a story and there was a story already being told with these twenty strangers. 

But what was it?

Jay would never admit it out loud, but he considered himself somewhat of an adept film analyst.

In his earlier years, his excitement at constructing film theories and observations led him to sit in front of a camera in his childhood bedroom and ramble on with his too big teeth and unbrushed hair about how Fight Club was more than met the eye or how the story of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was actually all in Charlie’s head. He even had the audacity at times to manually flip the camera around to point at the fuzzy screen of the eight inch television on his dresser between two towers of ragged VHS cases, the image so washed out on screen that it was near incomprehensible. 

These videos were lost to time and it was a good thing too; sparing the public from witnessing them was something like a huge service to humanity. 

Since then, Jay’d taken his once audacious and quite obvious theorizing and traded it in for quiet exploratory observation, mostly contained to his head on a loop until they were basically memorized. The real revelations were written down in a notebook he had left over from his film school days, brief as they were and wholly unhelpful in his private musings. 

It hadn’t all been wasted time, though. Because as Jay stood around watching the others chop pieces of bamboo and tear at huge leaves, Jay was theorizing.

And his theory was this—this was a television show. 

A profound observation, sure, but this was the fact of the matter. 

They had introduced themselves the first day on their private beach. The other tribe of ten, Verata, was unseen and rumored to be housed on another nearby island; they’d only see the opposing tribe when they were ready to battle them for safety. _Good_ , Jay thought, because he could only tolerate these nine. Jay had done well, smiling and shaking hands and he gave no evidence that he was thoroughly dissecting them in search of what their true purposes were here.

Jay supposed Sundarata was somewhat of a mosaic. They fit together in some carefully constructed configuration, not as clean as puzzle pieces, but this ‘fitting in’ depended primarily on roles, or what he knew from film as being character tropes.

Some of them included: Andy, a sales rep with a west coast air about her—The Girl. Gillian, a corporate consultant from Nevada, wearing a polite smile that didn’t reach her eyes—The Queen. Jim, perhaps one of the tallest men Jay had ever met, originally from Canada but who now resided in Seattle—The Leader. Vince, one of the oldest on the tribe at fifty-three, ex-military and humorless, and he reminded Jay vaguely of his father in this sense, but thankfully not enough to cause acute discomfort—The Warrior.

Jay could see it all now but he wondered where he fit in here, if he would ever fit in at all. 

* * *

They lost.

It had been an obstacle course in a dusty clearing in the middle of the jungle. Start at point A, make it to point B, but only by the most inconvenient path cluttered with barriers. It was team against team, but Jay’s company was on the weaker side compared to their opposition comprised of some men like linebackers and a few women with bigger biceps than Jay could ever dream of achieving.

It had been a blowout, and just as embarrassing. The Verata tribe had flown through each obstacle while Sundarata struggled to remain upright as they raced across wobbly, wooden beams. Dust invaded their sinuses and caked their teeth when they belly-crawled under fishing nets pulled taut no more than a foot off the ground and and there had even been a point when Jim had to grab Jay by the ass and launch him over a smooth, wooden wall, of which scraped his knees when he fell over it.

Now they stood, panting and humiliated, at the end of the course without anything to show for their best effort.

“Verata, taking home lanterns and another pot.” They surely would have preferred immunity but this consolation prize of kerosene-powered light and additional cooking ability was fine too. 

This was not the end of Sundarata’s persecution, however, because there existed a tiny, arid island far off in the horizon where one of them would be sent off as a scapegoat to repent for their loss— Exile Island.

“Sundarata, one of you is going to Exile Island tonight. Who is it?”

The tribe turned in on itself, humming indiscriminately like a buzzing beehive. Jay couldn’t decipher their rabble but then all at once, his tribe mates turned to look at him.

 _Shit_.

“I think it’s me,” Jay murmured around the dirty fingernail he was chewing on. He sighed quietly, picked up his bag from the ground and brought the strap over his shoulder. “They’re too nice to kick me out. So I’ll take my leave.” 

“All right,” Jeff said. “Jay, pick one person from the opposing tribe to accompany you.”

This was a surprise. Verata had won. They should have been exempt from adverse punishment, but this game was sadistic.

Jay scanned the muscled and sweaty victors opposite his own ragged, loser tribe. 

There was a woman staring him down with her hands on her hips. Her bubblegum-pink fingernail polish was somehow still intact. She was older than Jay but undeniably strong; she might have been a powerlifter back at home. Next to her was a short, slender man who had proven ridiculously agile in the challenge. His striped, collared shirt was already stained from the crawling portion and he appeared as inept as Jay currently felt about enduring a night on an abandoned heap of sand in the middle of the ocean.

Then there was a man, on the very edge of the group, looking to be around Jay’s age. He wore his red buff as a headband, giving sight to the black hair atop his head. His dusty face was drawn into a scowl, something Jay related to and was so often annoyed by when confronted about it. The man’s calves were meatier than Jay’s and hairier; they looked strong, capable. He was sweating through his shirt at the collar too, under the armpits and under his pillowy pecs above his rounded gut, which spilled slightly over his waistband.

There was something about him that intrigued Jay. It might have been the way he stood sturdy and scowled deeper when the sun emerged from behind a thin cloud, something like a rugged attractiveness radiating from his stoic demeanor. But it might also have been that Jay really did believe this seemingly strong man was his best option at survival tonight. 

Jay pointed. “Blue shirt.”

“Mike,” Jeff said, “you’re going with Jay to Exile Island. Grab your stuff and walk that way to the boat.”

There was no goodbye from Sundarata but Verata was all sympathetic expressions and pats on Mike’s back. Jay tried not to roll his eyes; it ended up being all for naught. 

“Sorry,” Jay groused as they boarded the vessel stalled at the ocean’s edge. “I had to pick someone.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it; shitty twists aren’t your fault.” Mike took a seat beside him on the pleather bench. The boat’s engine hummed to life and they began their course toward the tiny island in the distance. “Plus, I could really use a break from some of them.”

“Should you be telling me that?”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’m Mike.” Jay took the large hand Mike offered him in his much smaller one. 

“Jay. Bauman.”

Mike smiled, eyes squinting slightly under his bushy, black eyebrows and something weird twisted in the very pit of Jay’s stomach. 

“Nice to meet you, Jay.”

The boat dropped them off at a small island of nothingness. It was sandy—might have been nothing _but_ sand—but still the land rose and coiled in high elevations above them. Its peaks were accessible by unkept trails and they could spot a flag marking base camp at one of those higher points. Together, they began their journey upward and away from the danger of the soon to be rising tide.

“Where are you from, Jay?”

Ew. Small talk. This was one of Jay’s most hated facets of human interaction next to faking laughter and holding doors open at too far of a distance. This question, innocent as it was, annoyed him greatly. His mood was already shot after his being betrayed by his tribe mates (traitors, the lot of them!) and the heat and increasing steepness of this narrow trail wasn’t helping any, either.

Now that Jay thought about it, he was feeling rather sour about the whole thing. Sundarata didn’t even know him and already he was on the outs. It wasn’t fair, but little was ever fair in Jay’s experience.

“Uh, Milwaukee. What about you?”

“Chicago.”

Jay glanced over his shoulder. “No shit.” 

“We’re practically neighbors, huh?” Mike’s breath grew heavier with the steepness of the trail. He braced a hand on his knee and used it to push himself up. “Have you— _hah_ —ever been to Chicago?”

“Yeah. Well. No. I've been to the suburbs of Chicago once. For a horror convention, but no one really showed up.”

Wicked amusement was tangible in Mike’s voice. “Horror convention?”

“Yeah,” Jay grumbled, embarrassed suddenly. “A convention for horror movies and stuff. It was a whole thing.”

“And what do you do at a horror convention?”

“Take pictures with horror movie celebrities. Buy merch, I don’t know.”

Mike had fallen behind him during their ascent but that didn’t stop Jay’s body reacting the same as if Mike were centimeters behind him. The faint strands of hair at the back of his neck stood at attention. Goosebumps erupted down his chest just under his shirt. Maybe it was just the low, teasing tone of Mike’s voice that had some sex-hungry part of Jay remembering hot nights some years ago. He’d been in a dry spell, though Jay didn’t want to think about it; it really bummed him out.

“Sounds like an awesome reason to drive all the way to the outskirts of Chicago.”

“Are you being facetious?”

Mike hummed cleverly but did not answer. “Was Freddy Krueger there?”

“Oh shut up.”

Jay didn’t know if this guy was just trying to be a smartass or what. Mike’s teasing made him come off as nothing more than a mischievous, ‘bad boy’ type, which was saying something rather pathetic considering he was much too old to be acting as such. No wonder he wanted a break from his tribe; they were probably fed up with him. 

Jay didn’t know what he wanted to get from his time on Exile with Mike. He wasn’t sure how he should play it. On one hand he could be totally honest and admit to this stranger from the lot of his appointed enemies that he really didn’t know what the fuck he was doing out here. On the other, he could pretend to be some confident mastermind that had this all figured out. The latter option might have been the better choice, come to think of it--

Jay’s foot slipped atop a dry rock breaking free from where it had been embedded in the dusty pathway. It tumbled down the steep incline to his right; Jay’s foot, and body, began to quickly follow after it. His breath stuttered. His hands flailed. Jay was soon to be sliding down the side of what might as well have been a cliff but then strong fingers wrapped tightly around his bicep, holding him upright and steady.

“Holy shit, dude—are you okay?” All playfulness was gone from Mike’s tone in one second. He was speaking with soft concern and Mike was standing so close now, no longer some steps behind Jay but right up behind him, his presence fretfully alarmed.

Jay’s heart raced. “Y-Yeah.”

“You sure? Is your ankle okay?”

The sun’s heat was relentless on Jay’s face even as he looked down, and there was that movement in his stomach again, the rolling over of something that lit his blood on fire. _No,_ absolutely not-- Jay refused to entertain his body’s reaction to this annoying, straight boy. He gritted his teeth and shrugged harshly out of Mike’s grip. “Yeah.”

It was a relief to finally reach the altitude of base camp. They battled for breath and through their gasps, they voiced the need to collect what they’d need for their survival.

It soon became apparent just how comfortable Mike was out here; he moved through the sand effortlessly and took what he needed from the scorched Earth to ensure their survival together. Even outside of Jay’s sour mood, he could acknowledge there was something about Mike that was vexingly brilliant. His confidence, maybe? Lack of self-loathing? Mike reeked of success leftover from the challenge today and Jay was but a measly crumb of disappointment Mike was now forcibly stuck with. 

Jay ghosted behind Mike like a festering stormcloud, irritated by this whole ordeal but not risking straying too far when he didn’t trust the landscape. 

They came upon a large bush of brittle twigs not too far from camp. Mike reached into the thick of it and snapped off a branch. He added it to the growing pile he held against his chest with his arm. Jay, feeling somewhat guilty at his idleness, sidled up beside him and grabbed hold of his own branch. 

Jay tugged, pulled, yanked. 

It didn’t budge.

Embarrassed, Jay let go and grabbed for another. This one too refused to move. Humiliated twice—okay, three times after the horrifying tripping incident—had turned him quietly vicious and Jay refused to surrender to this hunk of dehydrated shrubbery. 

“Do you need help?” Mike asked as Jay battled with the bush in a bout of tug of war.

“I. Got. It,” Jay spat through gritted teeth, accentuating each word with another rough tug of the branch. 

“I think we might have enough—“

_“I got it.”_

“Geez, all right.”

Now that Mike’s eyes were upon him, Jay felt a nervous need to prove himself. He fought with the hefty branch until finally four, paltry inches broke off in his hand. Jay made a sound of satisfaction he hoped was convincing enough to assure Mike he wasn’t a total failure. 

“So, what?” Jay said once they were back at camp, his tone a bit rougher than he had intended, or perhaps he had, he didn’t know anymore. “Everyone in Chicago goes camping or something? This is apparently no problem for you.”

Mike hummed in question and looked up from where he was arranging sticks into a pyramid-like structure on the hard ground. “Hm? Oh yeah, kinda. My dad is big into the outdoors. Goes fishing on the weekends, that sort of thing. He’d take the family out to state parks and campgrounds when I was a kid, so it’s kind of muscle memory at this point. What about you?”

“Nature isn’t really my thing.”

“So you decided to play Survivor, an entirely outdoor game?”

Jay rolled his eyes with a comment about how they needed to hurry up before night fell. Mike said nothing but Jay could practically feel his smug smile boring into him.  
  
What an ass.

Silence encroached over the sandy landscape now burning orange under the setting sun. Jay could see the darkness quickly approaching, and without shelter or food, it was surprisingly daunting. They came around the firewood at the center of flatland designated as theirs. Attached to the base camp’s flagpole, a crudely drawn map of where water could be found, as well as a piece of flint and a machete which were hanging on the same nail tacking the map in place.

“Wanna start the fire?” Mike tossed him the flint, which Jay almost dropped. Jay made a gruff noise, clutching the item tightly in his hand. “I can go fill up our cantines.”

Jay walked over to Mike so he could hand him the canteen Jay removed from over his shoulder. Standing this close to Mike now, their height difference was shockingly apparent. Jay was eye level with Mike’s collarbone and Mike had to crane his neck down further the closer Jay came to him. 

“See that?” Jay pushed the canteen lightly into the center of Mike’s pillowy chest, trying to sound firm but failing miserably. “How I handed my canteen to you instead of throwing it? See how easy that is?”

Mike cracked a smile as he looked down at Jay. “Well, I made it a point to not throw the machete. That counts for something, right?”

It was becoming obvious this was just the way Mike was: a smartass, wiseass bastard and natural flirt. Mike was standing a bit too close and that whole lie Jay had tried convincing himself of how Mike was the best choice for survival, and for no other reason, began to fall apart in his mind. Jay turned away from Mike indignantly, upper arms pinned to his sides as he remembered his lack of deodorant and his failure to find a way into the ocean today. _Fuck_.

Mike followed the map down a nearby slope of land and effectively disappeared out of sight of camp. Jay watched after him for a second too long and then with a sigh, returned his attention to the flint in his sweaty hand. He bit his lip.

Jim made fire back at Sundarata’s camp all the time. It looked pretty easy when he did it.

Jay sat down beside the pile of firewood. He scraped off some magnesium with the machete blade like he’d seen Jim do and then struck the flint. White-orange sparks sprayed the kindling. Jay flinched with a stunned inhale of breath. 

Despite the dramatics, the flame failed to catch. Jay tried again and again, his fear lessening and his impatience increasing as he began to hiss curses with each strike to the flint.

Jay was so consumed in the task at hand, he failed to register Mike reappearing with two full canteens and another armful of small branches, which he set down nearby. “Where's the fire?” 

“I’m getting it, okay?” Jay fumbled with the flint with as much dignity as he could muster which ended up not being much. Mike hung their canteens up on the flagpole and sat down on the ground on the other side of the unlit fire. Jay could see Mike in his periphery set his elbow on the knee of one of his crossed legs, rest his chin on his fist. 

Jay was panting once he let up from his assault on the flint. He wiped the sweat from his brow and mourned the pain in his forearms. Why was he doing this? Wasn’t this what he had chosen Mike anyway, so he could do tasks like this for Jay instead? Enough with this trying to prove himself shit; Jay was tired and Mike was supposed to be helping him out.

Jay held out the flint. “Do you want to try?”

Mike hummed in mock consideration. Jay wasn’t sure if Mike was infuriating or charming. Could someone be both? “I guess I could give it a go.”

Mike took the flint and struck it with the machete twice at most. As if by magic, fire ignited the dry leaves in a shy flame growing quickly. Mike fed it sticks and twigs until it became a crackling body of warmth. The shadows cast by the flames warred across Mike’s huge hands and knuckles, making them seem attractively larger in the illusion of light and dark.

“There we go,” Mike said, adding one last large branch to the pyramid.

“Yeah, great job,” Jay grumbled.

Mike slid down onto the sand with a tired exhale, propping himself up on an elbow as he watched the fire separating them, and small as it was, it felt impossible to cross. It was quiet for some time. Jay hoped this game could lend itself to teaching him how to better communicate, but for now he fled into his usual ways of interaction and that meant silently brooding, staring and studying the ground or anything else.

“So, Jay.” Jay looked up from where he had been picking at a stain on the side of his shoe. “What brings you out here?”

“To Exile Island?”

“To Survivor.”

The wind blew thin and sleek, like icy ribbons wrapping around Jay’s bones. He brought his legs to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. 

“That’s… a tough one.” 

Jay thought briefly perhaps he should lie. A whole part of this game was to lie and exploit others’ trust, ultimately for a million dollars; he was in dire need of practice. But Jay was tired and this situation was unexpected and the fact that his tribe had sent him to suffer had him feeling betrayed and weirdly hurt. He never had been a popular kid. He had maybe been subconsciously hoping he could fit in now, but there was a good chance Jay would never be able to fit in.

“I was drunk.” A weak smile tugged at Jay’s lips as he stared at the flames licking the night air. “If I’m being honest.”

“You can be honest,” Mike said. “I mean. I plan to be honest, anyway. I don’t have any reason not to be.”

“Not even that I’m from the other tribe? That isn’t reason enough?”

“I don’t feel like I have to lie to you.”

“You don’t know me.”

Mike looked up at Jay. Firelight twinkled in Mike’s eyes, the same shade of red as the buff around his head. “I’d like to get to know you. I think you’re pretty, interesting.” There was a brief pause between the last two words, but not long enough to avow meaning beyond a reasonable doubt. And if he were younger, stupider, Jay would have clung to the hope of Mike’s potential interest. 

“I’m unemployed,” Jay offered quietly. “Newly unemployed, anyway. I wish that was a lie. Right before I came out here, they let me go.”

“What’d you do?”

“Fixed VCRs.”

Mike smiled and then Jay did too, and they both fell into hearty laughter like their stomachs weren’t painfully empty and the wind wasn’t frigid. 

“You’re fucking with me!” Mike said.

“I’m not!”

Jay was still socially inept in a lot of ways, what with VCR repair work being a lonely job, but maybe being out here would teach him how to really connect with others, teach him how to laugh again.

“No way,” Mike said, awed, after he’d caught his breath. “VCRs are still a thing?”

“Well, not anymore. I should be able to find something else, I’m sure.Or maybe I won’t have to look for another job, not if I win.”

“Good luck to you.”

“What about you?” Jay asked. “What do you do for work?”

“I’m an electrician,” Mike said. “My uncle’s an electrician and he has his own business in Chicago. I’ve been working there since I was seventeen.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s definitely not what I ever dreamed myself doing.”

“Yeah,” Jay murmured with somber understanding. “What did you dream of yourself doing?”

“Repairing VCRs, actually, but apparently it’s finally gone under. You’ve dashed my dreams, Bauman.”

Jay broke into laughter, laughed a little harder when Mike joined in with him. 

Mike felt familiar to Jay at this moment. He wasn’t all that bad after all, not when Jay could imagine the two of them hanging out back home, going to the bar, sharing a drink. Mike was naturally charming, and that was a superpower that could have him feeling like he was everybody’s friend.

That sort of thing was dangerous in this game, though— Jay knew this, but what was so bad about pretending to have a friend, if only for one night?

“And why are you out here?” Jay asked. “Other than the money, I mean. Or maybe just for the money, I don’t know.”

Mike laid down on his back with a groan of exertion and discomfort at the hard ground. “Maybe we can save that conversation for another day.”

Jay laid down too. Warmth rolled from the fire across his right side while his left remained in the shadow of cold. He felt torn between two worlds, one warm and familiar, the other cold and frightening. The fire was strong but the night seemed never ending. Jay sincerely wasn’t sure which would end up claiming him first. And just when he was starting to feel lost and anxious, Mike’s voice carried through the darkness like a beam of light shining into stormy seas. He was talking about the landscape, comparing this sandy terrain to the planet of Tatooine. Have you seen those movies? Do you like Star Wars? What about Star Trek? 

“I’ve never seen Star Trek.”

Mike lifted his head abruptly, looked over at him. “No!? That’s a fucking travesty, Jay.”

Jay smirked. “Geez, sorry.”

“As soon as the game ends, I will personally mail you my own boxsets of Star Trek so you can watch them. What!” Mike said, chuckling when Jay did. “Why are you smiling? I mean it!”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mike said, mocking and dopey, causing them both to crack up like a bunch of assholes. 

Jay’s body turned warm and finally, the cold was manageable. 

They spoke of TV and music over this fence of fire between them but it was mostly talk of movies on their tongues. Popular film and cult film alike, they shared the names of those movies that had made them laugh, that had inspired them, raised them. They spoke of movies that had made them cry, films that had thoroughly broken their hearts. They talked for what seemed like hours until their mouths were dry and their throats hurt. Jay might have wanted to go get his canteen but he feared breaking himself from this moment right now.

They grew quiet under the moon as it rose to its highest altitude. Neither of them had eaten, would not eat until midday tomorrow, but Jay was weirdly full by the conversation. He chewed consonants and swallowed syllables, had sipped Mike’s voice until satisfied and truly comfortable.

“What will you do with the money if you win?” Mike asked quietly after some time.

“If I win?” Jay breathed a mirthless laugh. “Fat chance.”

Mike furrowed his brow, looked over at him. “But you _could_ win.” Jay said nothing. Mike turned onto his side to face him, an arm folded beneath his head and his eyes set on Jay’s profile, currently blanketed in the fire’s flickering light. “You have as much chance as anyone else. It’s still so early in the game.”

“I think there was a point where I really did think that I could win,” Jay murmured, eyes set on the sky and his finger idly circling the rim of his belly button through his shirt. “On the first day we were here. Briefly. Like deja vu or something. But then I realized there are people like you out here, people who can make fire and who can make people smile.”

“Implying you don’t make people smile?” Jay turned his head and was surprised to find such a vehement sincerity burning in Mike’s gaze. “You’ve made me smile plenty of times tonight.”

“Have I?” Jay asked, sounding small.

And he witnessed it for himself when Mike smiled so gently, maybe even sadly, at him.

“You know the thing I really like about this game? Anyone can win. It doesn’t matter if you can make a fire, or if you’re good at small talk. It doesn’t matter how strong you are, or how athletic, or how good-looking, or how young, or really, how smart. Every kind of person has won this game at least once. You could well be the next winner.”

“Yeah,” Jay said. “Maybe.”

A piece of wood in the fire popped. Jay turned onto his side so he was facing Mike. He brought his knees up to his stomach. The heat blanketed his bare calves gone unprotected by his shorts.

“If I won,” Jay said, still looking at the fire, “I want to think I’d do something worthwhile with the money. Like get out of my shitty apartment and buy a new car and all that. But another part of me wants to sink it all in a little video shop I want to open. I know no one uses them anymore but this one would be different. I’d sell and rent out movies, but I’d also have short film contests and shit like that. I thought of painting one of the outside walls white and project movies onto it during the summer.”

Admitting this lifelong dream felt strangely like baring a piece of himself; Jay hadn’t shared this with anyone before. He expected laughter, a joke at his expense. Mike would say it was impossible and improbable and how no one went to video stores any more, and Jay would have to agree quietly in order to save himself from further humiliation. 

But what Jay did not expect was Mike’s gentle response of, “I think that’s plenty worthwhile, Jay.”

Jay’s fingers drew into a fist over his heart. It beat a fraction faster against his dusty knuckles. His eyes fell closed and he lost himself for a moment in this warm feeling.

“What would you do with the money?” Jay asked.

“I don’t know.” Mike sighed. “Quit my job? That’d probably be the first thing to go. Buy a stupid sports car. Go to Prague. Burn it all in a blaze of fiery glory.” He smiled, pointed a finger at Jay. “Don’t tell anyone that. They’ll bring it up when they’re on the jury. Promise?”

“If we even get to the end.”

“ _When_ we get to the end. Positive— gotta stay positive.”

But Jay had never been the type to be positive. He didn’t let that on or maybe it was already obvious. If it was, Mike didn’t say anything. 

That night they slept turned toward each other and with the fire between them, finally nodding off but not before staring in silence at the glimmer of the flame’s light reflected in each other’s eyes for some time.

* * *

Sundarata was there on the beach to greet Jay when he returned from Exile Island. They placed a coconut shell of freshly-cooked rice in his hand, of which he wolfed down begrudgingly as they bombarded him with questions.

“Was it hot?”

_Somehow hotter than it is here._

“And there’s no food?”

_Not unless you want to eat twigs._

“Was Mike nice?”

Jay’s eyes glanced upward from his makeshift bowl. “Um. Yeah.” He licked a grain of rice up from where it was stuck at the corner of his mouth, looked back down. “He was good company.”

Sundarata didn’t ask anymore about this mystery man called Mike. Jay was thankful; he couldn’t exactly explain how they had gotten along so well last night or what he truly felt about Mike. Jay honestly didn’t know. He couldn’t think straight when he thought about it. Those memories from Exile were sped up in a blur of whatever emotion had been racing through his veins and fizzling in his stomach to make him feel like he could run a few laps around the island without getting tired.

Jay stayed put for now, however, and powered through his meal.

He hadn’t expected he would ever be living with nine strangers in surprisingly close proximity. And scary thing was, he was getting used to it.

Come night, the cameras turned on their night vision and the survivors crawled into their constructed shelter, admittedly better than the sandy ground Jay had known last night. And surprisingly, it held under their combined weight. Jay was elated. Who was he even? Tie one knot apparently and he loses his goddamn mind. 

The shelter was only so big and they had to squeeze together to all fit. Jay initially thought this would be his worst nightmare, this overcrowding and proximity to people—all of them strangers no less. But he soon found his breath matching the rhythm of those around him and the night was cold but they were warm. 

Jay had been bothered by his status as ‘outcast,’ as recently as yesterday; it didn’t feel like he was an outcast right now. It was all _perception_ , he thought in that crystal clear space between waking and sleeping. They all fit somewhere in the tribe. Jay’s spot between Jim and Gillian was reserved just for him, and he was officially a unique and crucial piece in the Sundarata puzzle.

Jay had moved out at the age of eighteen without much discussion or protest from his loving parents. He packed two suitcases and a backpack of what remained of his belongings he had not sold in the past two months. He’d left in his old Kia Rio and called his cousin, Rita, to take her up on the offer she posed at every family function: “We should room together once you start college. I’ll be working on my Masters and I’ll be able to show you around campus.” Thankfully she was excited, and perhaps a little suspicious at Jay taking her up on her proposal only two days after his eighteenth birthday, but she was nice enough to not mention it. 

Rita’s only stipulation was that Jay apply to university and register for classes. Jay did, unenthusiastically. This was around the time he was trying to take up smoking and was beginning to drink more often. He finished high school and started college. He only attended four film classes before dropping out the first semester. 

He did not wait for Rita to get home but wrote her a letter after a few months of rooming with her thanking her for her love and generosity and always seeing something more in him. He took his car and left. She ended up calling him some hours later in a tizzy.

“I’m fine,” he said, already regretting having answered the phone. “I, just. Found another place.” It was true; he’d found it on Craigslist and while they did charge rent compared to the free lodging at Rita’s, Jay couldn’t stand to stay here anymore.

“Okay, well,” Rita sighed tensely, “your letter was… worded eerily.”

Jay guessed it was and felt guilty for worrying the one person who kind of cared. That night, he drank until he couldn’t stand and watched movies on his phone until he forgot he was all alone in an unfurnished shithole. 

It was lonely. Jay had always been lonely, but that was in a house full of people. Now he was on his own. And he began trying to convince himself of ghosts haunting the hallways just so Jay could hope that anything else was here with him other than his own shadow.

There were shadows here on the island; the silhouettes of Jay’s past hung in his periphery. There had been a time when he flinched away from them, pretended their harrowing presence was not there in his present life and looming over every decision he made. But he was learning to get on with his life even when he was reminded of his mother’s words of disapproval or his father’s lack of guidance. There was no other choice than to get on with his life when it was survival out here. That was one of the big elements of this whole thing— survival. And it sure did help to be in the midst of other people. They provided food, warmth, as well as adequate distraction from this situation of great demand and no comfort.

Rusty, the youngest of the tribe at twenty-one, was a parkour hobbyist and great entertainment.

He’d run up tree trunks and backflip off of them, walk on his hands, twist and corkscrew in the air without ever having to take a step. He spruced up the more boring downtime between challenges, and while Jay might not have been able to do a flip, he saw a part of himself in Rusty. 

Rusty had that same shakiness in his knees and brazen confidence in his face that all young people had when they were ready and angry at the world but unsure if they’d be strong enough to face it. Even after a few days, Rusty looked to be growing taller. He stood up straighter. He broke open coconuts and tended to the fire. Jay didn’t always completely catch the way he would smile in support of his transformation, inspired somewhat at seeing someone finding out who they were sooner than Jay ever had. Jay might not even have known the type of person he was yet at the point in his life.

Brianna was from New York City, born and raised, and was hilarious even when she wasn’t trying to be. It was the dryness of her delivery of acute observation and an almost poetic commentary on universal truths that amused Jay. She told Jay one evening after dinner that a guy like him belonged in New York. 

“A guy like me?”

“Someone who keeps to themselves. Someone who doesn’t take any shit. The city’s not kind to anyone, but people like us can handle it.” 

Jay took this as a compliment and held it dear to his heart, this sentiment that even one of the biggest cities on Earth would not be able to break him.

The concept of an eight-to-five workday was but a shrinking memory in Jay’s subconscious. Out here, the weather and their bodies dictated the happenings of the day. If they were thirsty, they’d go go to the water well or suck rainwater from the pointed tips of palm fronds fallen over the edge of the shelter. If they were tired, they slept in the shelter or on the sand. If they were hungry, they’d go find something to eat in the jungle or in the ocean. 

One day when they had tired of rice and fruit, the tribe waded at the shoreline together and perused the crystal clear water for something to eat. Their findings were slim and had not been visually appealing, especially to Jay who never eaten snails before.

“Not even at a French restaurant or anything?” Matt asked.

“French restaurant?” Jay scoffed, the concept foreign to him who lived on a pizza joint budget.

They each took a snail in their hand. Jay took a steadying breath and on the count of three, popped it in his mouth. 

A single harsh shiver rolled through Jay’s body from head to toe. He swallowed agonizingly despite the fight from his gag reflex. It inched down the back of his tongue like a loogie and when the sensation and salty taste passed, Jay stuck his tongue out with a defeated and horrified expression. Sundarata laughed and patted him on the back. 

Disgusting or not, Jay didn’t have much of a choice. Production wouldn’t let them starve but still the portions of the provided meal plan of white rice were measly and borderline worrisome. So he forced himself to eat the sea life placed in front of him, thankfully coming to discover that he very much preferred his snails cooked. Jay would wait around patiently over Jim’s shoulder or whoever as they batted a tough little dollop of slime around the bottom of their cooking pot. They might even taste like fried oysters if he focused hard enough.

They would wash the pots out in the ocean and leave them out to dry at the base of a tree in camp. It would rain at night sometimes, which made sleep impossible and made everyone absolutely miserable. 

But they made the superstitious connection that it seemed to only rain on nights when they had just washed the pots. Even more than that, it only rained when they dried the pots facing upward, never when the pots were turned upside down.

They had just suffered another night of rain and they theorized desperately that perhaps putting out an empty pot was just taunting the clouds to fill it up. Jay was never superstitious at home but hell if he ever left a pot to dry right side up after washing it. 

Andy did yoga early in the morning. She woke him just before dawn one morning and asked Jay to join her. He didn’t want to be rude, so he wiped the sleep from his eyes and got up. He’d never done yoga before and was clumsy in his grogginess, trying half-heartedly in his attempt to touch his toes or whatever weird twist she was pitching, so he seemed more like a disgruntled teen than a willing participant.

Andy was patient with him. She took mercy and saved the more intricate maneuvers for another day and gave him easy twists of the upper body and reaches of his hands. Jay managed to pop his back at one point, then his knee and his shoulder and his elbow and it was funny and felt absolutely divine, and he thought he might have fucked it up by laughing but Andy smiled encouragingly, laughed with him, said that laughing was good.

They ended it by sitting cross-legged on the sand. Their hands rested on each of their knees, back straight and chin up.

“Deep breaths,” Andy said. “Clear your mind.”

Yeah, right. An empty mind was easier said than done. It was a one hundred mile per hour game of mental Pong going on up there twenty-four seven. Stressful stimuli beget painful memories beget somatic tenseness beget an occasionally sour gut and a chronic sore spine. But hey-- Jay shifted his shoulder blades together, shifted his neck-- his back was feeling better now, so that was something.

Jay didn’t really get the whole meditating thing but it was nice to sit on the beach in the early morning. The sun was just barely waking on the horizon. The sand was still cool from the moonlight. Andy emerged from her own inner meditation and joined Jay in his open-eyed silence as they took in the rising sun.

Andy spoke of a son she had at home. She got a little choked up but didn’t cry. Jay was selfishly thankful for this, wasn’t adverse to seeing someone cry but didn’t trust himself to be wholly compassionate.

Andy’s son’s name was Noah. He was six.

“He didn’t really get why I was leaving,” she said as the sun sat on the ocean like a glowing red beach ball. She wiped her eye with the tip of her finger, tried to smile. “I explained it to him. I ended up showing him some clips on my phone, but he forgets. He’s with his grandma right now, so that’s good. She has a little dog-- Bingo. He loves dogs. I like to think that softens the blow somewhat of me not being with him.”

“Bingo,” Jay said, drawing his finger through the sand, “coming in clutch.”

That got a laugh out of her and yes, laughing was good.

She asked Jay if he did anything like this at home. Yoga, she meant. 

“I don’t do anything, really,” he answered.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Don’t want to. Or I don’t see the reason to.”

“Well how do you know there’s no reason to if you’ve never tried it?”

Jay didn’t have an answer, so he said nothing.

As they were walking back to the shelter from the beach, Andy told Jay that he should try some new things out once he got back home. Try a yoga class. You like coffee? Well why not go outside your comfort zone and try a local tea shop. Paint a picture. Go to a concert of a band you’ve never heard about. Walk your neighbor’s dog.

“Be a part of the world,” she said.

Jay couldn’t promise her anything, so he didn’t. But he did say thank you for inviting him to partake with her.

One of the people Jay was closest to out here was Gillian. She was frightening to Jay but he had managed to get in her good graces by having what she described as ‘a level-head.’ She was outstandingly smart and Jay listened more than talked when he was with her, because he hadn’t known her long but knew well enough that she would strike on any piece of information he offered with terrifying accuracy. He had seen her do it to others and they now ran the risk of soon being out of the game and on their way home. 

It was a dreary morning of them sitting around when Gillian pretended to host a newscast. They were tired after a night of inadequate rest and depressed with yet another rainstorm quickly approaching. That was when Gillian stood up in front of them, looking as prim and proper as she could in her button down, a relic of her office job back home in Nevada. It was already stained with dirt but they pretended it wasn’t as they played along with her.

“On this afternoon’s _Sundarata Radio Report_ — a food shortage!”

She spoke the truth. In the earliest days of their camp, they greatly misjudged just how much rice they had in that lidded pot of theirs and doled out too much. There had been a few times at the beginning they had actually eaten their fill. The most they ate this morning was equivalent to two medium-sized spoonfuls of rice. 

Zoe did the traffic. Instead of vehicular congestion, she spoke of the frequency and height of the darkening waves and the paths of seabirds they sometimes spotted moving across the sky. It was as amusing as it was strangely desperate. This was their new normal, and thinking back to the world they had come from felt as useless and alienating as meditating on some faraway planet that might not exist.

Matt, the thirty-four year old banker with a frat boy air, popped his collar and took hold of a thick branch, speaking into it in an exaggerated voice as he gave the weather. Clouds were already rolling in over the horizon and he described it as God sending down Hell.

“Here is one very upset resident of Sundarata’s beach to tell us about what he thinks of the storm that will most likely wash all of us into the ocean.” Matt pushed the branch-microphone into Jay’s face. Jay perked up, crossing his eyes to stare owlishly down at it. 

“U-Uhm… More rain is definitely the last thing I need right now. My shoes just finished drying, Matt.” The whole tribe laughed. Jay smiled. Mike was right-- Jay could manage to make people laugh.

Most of these people were around his age, and that would make it that they would get along well but the person Jay was hands-down closest to in Sundarata came as a surprise.

Her name was Patty. She was from Tennessee and she was fifty-nine. Her positivity—blinding. Usually Jay blanched at the sight of too many smiles and too frequent kind words, but around her, he allowed it, was even kind of dazed and quieted by it. Though Patty would cook the rice more often than not on her own insistence and listen to them complain about the game, their relationships and their lives, she was not a popular member of the tribe. It was her age that unfairly separated her from the crux of conversation and that only made Jay like her that much more. He knew what it was like to be outside of the in-crowd and who would want to be in with a guy like Matt, who just oozed douchey energy anyway?

“I’m out here for my family,” Patty had said when Jim asked how she had made her way all the way out here. She wanted to buy a farmhouse in her home state and raise goats. “Something to keep me and my husband busy now that the boys are out of the house.”

Jay would just sit there and stare as Patty stirred the rice or folded shirts left on the ground by those frolicking in the ocean, and he would begin to think that this game was really unraveling his mind. 

Jay hadn’t meant to call her ‘Mom.’ It just kinda slipped out.

“That’s okay,” she laughed after Jay murmured his humiliated apology. “My boys’ friends would do it all the time. Where are you from?”

“Milwaukee.”

“And that’s where your Momma is?”

“I don’t know.” Patty looked at him. Jay clarified hesitantly. “I don’t talk to her.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” and she really did sound sorry for him. “You’re a sweet young man, Jay. I want you to know that.”

Jay just stood there, shocked, like she had just slapped him across the face. No one had ever told him that, especially not a stranger. 

The world seemed less poison all of a sudden, but if only for a little bit.

And he was unprepared but not uncomfortable when Patty wrapped her arms around him in a sweet hug. It made Jay feel young again, somehow, and it was fucked up, this sort of catharsis he was getting by quietly pretending she was his mom. Not literally his mother but a representation of maternal love and kindness he had lacked most all his life.

Even as a kid, Jay’s mother had been sparse and when Patty showed him how to weave palm fronds that next afternoon, he could imagine his mom showing him how to do _something_ , anything, rather than leaving him in a houseful of toxic male figures that forced him to learn how to take care of himself. 

Every time his Mom came back from her numerous work trips, he clung to her and begged her not to go, to not leave him again. But she dismissed his pleading as nothing more than ‘Jay being dramatic,’ saw him as nothing more than a spoiled kid throwing a tantrum.

Jay had been excessively frightened as a child. He had cried himself to sleep almost every night for three years. The inconsistency, an interpreted lack of safety and an unaddressed anxiety disorder had really done a number on young him. Jay stopped talking to his dad and brothers around the time he hit junior high. He only ate junk when he would eat, would forget to do homework and not really care when he got failing grades. All he did was watch the films he picked up from the local video store and wish for something better after all of this. 

“I’m gay.”

It came out of nowhere, or maybe it had come from the same place that had compelled him to call her ‘Mom’.

Jay had never told his mother. She had never really known him. But he had told his surrogate mother during this dreamy, Lynchian existence on a tropical island where daytime stretched on for twenty-three hours and the nights were easily eighteen. 

Patty looked up at him, her expression unreadable. Jay’s voice was shaking when he finally spoke again. “Okay? I- I wanted to tell you. I’m gay.”

She placed her woven palm fronds aside. Patty scooched over to him and opened her arms. 

“Come here, honey.” Her arms were a comforting pressure around him, a blanket of motherly compassion warming his entire being. “I’m so proud of you. You know that?”

“D- Don’t tell anyone, _please_ , just—“

“Of course not! I won’t, Jay; I promise. It’s okay.” Patty squeezed her arms tighter around him. “I’m so proud of you.”

And Jay just blinked, again and again and again, nervous but relieved and ashamed and shocked that he was finally shedding this emotional weight on a white sand beach in Fiji.

* * *

Brianna and Zoe were teaching Jay how to braid Andy’s hair when Jim proposed they go out on the fishing boat for a look at the island. Neither woman on either side of Jay paid Jim much mind, too focused on the three pieces of blonde hair held unsteadily in Jay’s hands.

“Now take that piece in your left hand and put it over there— yeah, switch them,” Brianna said. “You don’t have any sisters? A little tighter there, don’t let go.”

Jay bit his tongue in concentration. “Brothers.”

“Are you close?” Zoe asked.

Jay didn’t answer. She didn’t prod.

“If we’re gonna go, we have to go now before the sun starts going down,” Jim said. “Jay, you coming?”

“I’ll go out with you,” Gillian said. She stood, turned back. “Jay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Jay said, handing over the hair to Brianna so she could finish for him.

Jay had never been on a fishing boat before. It was wooden and long with a low bar on either side surely for balance and to prevent the slender vessel from tipping. They paddled out with the short oars that had been found inside the boat. It was already parked on their beach in the event they won proper fishing gear at an upcoming challenge and could make proper use of it, but the probability of achieving victory against Mike’s buffed up tribe seemed slim even now.

“Paddle a little harder on the left, Jay,” Gillian said from the row behind him.

“Should’ve gotten Matt or Rusty out here,” Jay said, biceps aching with each drive of the oar through the strong ocean waves. 

“We wanted to talk with you,” Jim said.

“We?”

“Me and Jim,” Gillian said.

“About…”

Jim looked over his shoulder at Jay. “We want to work with you.”

They all stopped paddling. They waded, the whole boat jostling side to side with the rolling waves.

“It’s important to have people who will watch your back in this game,” Gillian said. “That’s how you get far— having that extra support.”

“And extra votes,” Jim said. “Coordinated votes go a lot farther than independently cast ones.”

“An alliance?” Jay said, turning to his side so he could easily look between them.

“We don’t have to tell the whole tribe,” Gillian said, “but yes.”

“It’d be better if we didn’t tell anyone actually. They’d try to weasel their way in or blow us all up.”

“Yeah, of course,” Jay agreed like, _no shit_.

“Are you close to anyone?” Gillian asked. 

“Patty.”

“Perfect,” Jim said. “Run it by her and let us know if she’d be interested. We need a few more people to really get the party started.”

Jim had a way about him; Jay couldn’t help but trust his words, his authority, was actually rather comforted by his attentiveness and inclusion. And Jay tried not to frown at this social magic. Jim could be trusted, for now. Jay had no other choice for his survival as long as he was living on Sundarata’s beach.

They stopped rowing. The nose of the boat was pointed out to sea but they all turned behind them to peer at the island. Black birds floated over the fluffy green tops of the jungle’s trees. A wind rustled their topmost leaves so they appeared sentient and shivering. Jay’d caught a glimpse of the entirety of the island on the boat returning him to his tribe’s beach from Exile. The wind was now much more manageable when not travelling sixty miles an hour over choppy waves and Jay could clearly see their own temporary piece of the world, lush and expansive and eerie.

* * *

“Back again,” Mike said as they boarded the boat destined for Exile once again. “What's the deal? You like me?”

Jay tried not to appear embarrassed but the heat inching across his cheeks surely gave him away. “I already know you. Cuts down on the small talk.”

“Well, I like you,” Mike said. Jay glanced at him.

Today’s challenge was just another stupid obstacle course, this time in the water. Jay wasn’t that bad of a swimmer but he also wasn’t as amazingly talented as the whole of Verata proved to be. His right eardrum was still buzzing. He wasn’t sure if that was from the bit of water stuck in his ear or Verata’s loud cheering after having won.

Jay had volunteered himself this time for Exile Island. He knew the landscape, or that was what he told them. It wouldn’t bother him as much as it would if one of them were to brave it for the first time. Sundarata obliged him. Jay’s choice for company was clear, especially considering how Mike was staring point-blank at him with an expression Jay couldn’t exactly read but which felt loaded. 

Mike and Jay stepped off the boat and onto the familiar shore of Exile. The island was exactly how they left it— sandy, steep and semi-lived in. They began up that dreaded trail, armed with nothing more than the knowledge of just how much it would suck getting to the top.

“I wasn’t sure if you would be mad,” Jay said through panted breath, “when I chose you. Hopefully I didn’t fuck up your game or, like, drag you out here against your will.” 

“Are you kidding?” Mike said. “Not at all.”

Jay looked to his left and narrowed his eyes at Mike. “I hate sarcasm.”

“I’m not being sarcastic! I was hoping you’d pick me, actually. I was trying to give you the look because I didn’t want to say anything.”

“‘The look.’”

“Yeah, so what. I wasn’t gonna put my hand up and jump up and down.”

Jay smirked. “Jump up and down?”

Mike breathed heavily, face contorting in both physical exertion and embarrassment. “Whatever.”

Jay was on the verge of laughter but kept it together; his lungs couldn’t spare the oxygen. “Why were you hoping I’d pick you?”

“I—” Mike huffed, looked at Jay. “What’s your deal, huh? Are you always so suspicious?”

“Only when it comes to you.”

And that had Mike smiling from ear to ear. “Ooh, you’re fun.”

Jay tried his best to glare but he didn’t really mean it. “Maybe I should have picked someone else to come with me,” Jay said. 

“Now you’re just being mean. Who would you have picked?”

“I dunno. Maybe that short guy. The one with the striped shirt and blonde hair.”

“Colin,” Mike said. “No, you wouldn’t want to pick him. He’s sweet, sure, but he can’t figure out how to use the machete. He’ll go to open a coconut, barely swing it and then he chickens out.”

“Hey, I chicken out too.”

Mike gestured agreeably at Jay. “That’s exactly my point. You’d have the chickening out job covered on Exile, so Colin would be forced to find something else to do.”

Jay slapped Mike’s meaty bicep. Mike threw back his head and cackled. 

“Who should I pick, then?” Jay asked.

“Me.”

“Aside from you.”

“Hmm. Rich?”

“Which one’s Rich?”

“The shortish guy. Has some weight on him.”

“The guy who wears his buff over the top of his head, right? The pirate look.”

Mike laughed. “The what?”

“The pirate look! You know, like old timey pirates—”

“Oh my God. Yes, that’s him. Y’know, I’m gonna tell him you think he looks like Smee.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“It was _implied_.”

“Implied my ass. You wanna get me in trouble.”

“Nah, I’ll put in a good word for you. I’m actually really close with him.”

There was something implied in that claim. Mike intended for it to be loaded; he was peeking at Jay now, like, _Do I have to say it? Should I say it?_

“I’m close with some people on my side too.”

Mike turned attentive. “Oh yeah. Who?”

“Good try.”

“You’re not gonna tell me?”

“Maybe we can save it for another day,” Jay said, turning Mike’s own words against him. Mike gaped and now it was Jay’s turn to laugh.

The fear of the unknown was absent this time around on Exile. Jay might have actually been looking forward to wasting time with Mike. Base camp was frozen in time, dusted with the white-black ash from their previous fire. They put off building another fire for the time being and instead went on an excursion before nightfall. They knew what base camp looked like but the rest of Exile was a mystery to them. 

Jay held the machete as they embarked across sandy hills burning orange beneath the sun. Exile looked like a stray piece of the Sahara afloat out here in an ocean of undrinkable water. Jay had to squint against the harsh reflection of the fiery light against the sand as their feet sank into it a few inches with every step. It was mildly exhausting and their thighs burned with the effort.

They breached the peak of one dune at an elevation higher than base camp. It was hot but then the wind blew cool, a reminder of the chilly night to come.They looked out on the arid expanse and felt like the only two in the world, like a new first of humanity dropped in a barren Eden.

“Let’s sleep up here,” Jay said and Mike agreed.

They made fire just before nightfall, or Mike did and Jay watched. This time they found a spot on their backs close to each other, flames burning above their heads. Their proximity was not discussed, just committed to without a word and like it was a given. Maybe it was; dusk descended and in the darkening shade of the sky, a kind of electric magnetism sizzled between them and drew them together. It prickled across the skin of their arms and legs and stomachs, a goosebump-y tingle that crackled in their blood and made them dizzy.

The sand was so much softer at this altitude. Jay could almost imagine the ground as a form fitting cushion, silky soft beneath his fingertips. The sky was different out here, too. Jay swore the sky had turned from black into a midnight blue deeper than any shade he’d seen before. Not only were there stars visible but entire galaxies and the blaring, pinpoint light of distant planets. Shooting stars raced across the sky at such a high frequency that Jay almost didn’t believe it.

“Whoa.” Mike pointed above them. “Did you see that?”

“There were two of them.”

“At the same time.”

Jay stared adamantly at the sky, his hands curled over his chest—clutching—as he became witness to the movement of the universe for the first time. What were the chances two shooting stars flew at the same time? It must have been some cosmic timing, quantum theory, something he didn’t understand but might as well believe in nonetheless.

“Sometimes I think this is what life is supposed to be like.”

Mike turned to look at Jay. “Like what?”

“Being able to see the stars. They were made for us to see them, but when’s the last time you’ve even looked at the sky at home? When’s the last time you had a reason to, even?”

Jay wasn’t religious, didn’t know what he meant when he said stars were ‘made’ for them. It just felt that way as he looked up at them now, like something personalized, a labor of love. He shifted his shoulder blades against the soft ground and Mike did too and they didn’t fully register that they were shimmying a little closer with each tiny adjustment of their tired bodies.

“I never see stars at home,” Mike murmured. “Living in the city and all. It’s too cloudy most nights anyway. I don’t know. It feels weird.”

“What feels weird?”

“Being reminded that I’ve been missing out on something as amazing as this. It makes me feel kinda dead.”

Jay frowned. “You’re not dead. Don’t say that; that’s fucked up.”

“I’m not dead?” Mike said, amusement coloring his voice but he also sounded so worn. “How can you be so sure? I could be dreaming this all. I could be dreaming you.”

They turned to look at each other. The stars could wait a bit longer; for now, they stared into each other’s eyes with an unrushed curiosity. The difference this time was that they were closer, quieter, more… open or something.

“Yeah,” Jay said, “you only wish you could dream someone up as interesting as me.” Mike hummed a laugh. “You’re with me,” Jay said. “It’s real.”

And then, Jay took Mike’s hand. He didn’t even really think about it before doing it; Jay shocked himself. It didn’t feel like a brave, thought-out attempt at being spontaneously flirty. Rather, it felt like vulnerability subconsciously bubbling to the surface and spilling over into pure action, Jay having so easily reached out in the hope of connecting with someone when the sky looked so beautifully ancient and endless, and weren’t they all so fresh and inexperienced and insignificant? 

This existential dread was placed on the backburner, however, as Jay lost himself in the spiralling storm of sudden panic as he realized what he’d just done.

Mike was looking at him. Not stupidly—well, maybe a little—but he was looking at Jay the same way you’d look at an albino deer spotted in the wild or a blue jay landing right on the brim of your hat: awed, silent surprise. He went to say something but didn’t follow through with it. Instead, Mike closed his mouth and smiled softly before finally returning his gaze to the sky. He gently tightened his grip in Jay’s so their shared connection was stronger, stabler, less at risk of being broken on the next breeze or adjustment of their bodies.

Jay’s heart was running a havoc in his chest. He couldn’t remember the last time he held someone’s hand. His high school years had his palms slick with nervous sweat. His late twenties, early thirties had them windbitten and cracked with Wisconsin’s never ending winter. But here he looked upon the joining of his and Mike’s hands with the same fondness as rummaging in a busted up old box at the top of your closet and bringing forth a piece of something valuable you’d forgotten all about.

 _Oh yeah,_ Jay thought. Or maybe it was less coherent but it was something like, _My hands are also for holding another person’s hands. They are indeed capable of doing so._

Stardust streaked the sky in a luminescent haze of glittery white. Jay was sincerely stunned silent at the sight of the night doing its dance above them, the sands of Fiji under them, Jay’s fingers twitching in Mike’s warm palm. And Mike stroked his calloused thumb over the top of Jay’s and for some reason, that small touch soothed Jay’s heart, easing it to a more comfortable pace that warmed him from the inside out.

“I think I’ve made twenty wishes tonight,” Mike said. “I’m running out of wishes.”

“Yeah,” Jay said, soft. “I don’t know what to wish for anymore.”

“Maybe we can cross wishes.”

“What?”

“You wish for my wish and I wish for yours.”

Jay snickered grossly at the back of his throat, too tired to care. “I think you’ve cracked the code to wishing on shooting stars.”

“I think I just made it more complicated,” Mike laughed. “Okay, close your eyes and get a wish in your head. Once you do, squeeze my hand and I’ll do the same.”

Jay closed his eyes. Darkness descended upon his vision, the same darkness that had plagued him in Milwaukee, but this time it was manageable and possibly even magnificent in the cosmicism of it all. Jay was not the first in history to ever suffer in some way. He would not be the last. And for right now, he was free from memories of pain and loneliness and uncertainty of growing up lost.

Mike squeezed Jay’s hand. That single pulse of pressure coursed through Jay’s entire body in one, soothing ripple.

“Keep your eyes closed,” Mike whispered. “We’ll open them on three. First shooting star you see— I’ll wish for your wish, you wish for mine. Okay? One… two… _three_.”

It was like Jay saw the entire sky all at once. It forced the breath out from his lungs and then there, in the upper right of his vision was a white scratch, thin as a razor’s edge and fleeting faster than a snowflake on flesh.

Mike and Jay squeezed each other’s hands at the same time. 

And in his mind, all Jay thought was, _“I wish for Mike to get that trip to Prague.”_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me just start by saying thank you so much for your kudos and comments 😭 This is such a niche sort of premise that I thought for sure this fic wouldnt get a lot of engagement. So actually hearing that you’re enjoying this fic and are excited to see what comes next makes me so happy. 
> 
> A big thank you once again and I hope you enjoy this chapter!!

Back home, Jay wasn’t one to look ahead.

At one time he had looked ahead to things he was sure were awaiting him—success, fame, love—but then he dropped out of college after an emotional breakdown occurring out of the blue freshman year when he realized that there wasn’t much to look forward to at all.

So he gave up on higher education and dreams of making films and drank too much without considering how hungover he would be in the morning or his potentially cultivating a dependence. He smoked sometimes too and didn’t care about the stink that would cling to his teeth and tongue and fingers for the rest of the day. He blew his measly paycheck on distractions, Blu-rays and movie theater memberships, without ever thinking about digging himself out of the grave that was Milwaukee, Wisconsin and moving onto something more worthwhile.

But out here, what was there? There was nature in its most tropical, abundant form, and in the rays of sunlight, Jay was exposed to the eye of the world and to himself.

He could have fallen to pieces. He could have submitted, dug a hole in the sand and hid his head. He could have walked right up to one of the wordless cameramen and proposed his secession from the game and demanded a ticket on the next plane to the U.S., anything to get him back to not having to think and look any further ahead from whatever distraction was in his hands or in his face or around his dick.

But carefully and gradually, Jay began to entertain his own ideas of staying on the island and not only that, somehow  _ thriving _ , winning one million dollars at the end of it. This was the first time Jay had been looking forward to something in a very long time. He was making plans, and damn, he wasn’t too bad at it.

There were two tribes in this game, but there would come a time when they would become one. Jay’s focus had shifted from staying alive as part of Sundarata to thinking further down the line to this ten people mass event called, ‘The Merge.’ This was just the preliminary rounds, the time to begin to put things in motion. It was the merge that would be what really counted and hopefully Mike and Jay would be there, together.

Jay could make it happen; that realization was a powerful one. It gave him chills. It wouldn’t be easy by any means but he could do the work to put himself in some good graces. He could lie to get ahead of another player. He could play well enough to get that much closer to the money.

Suddenly Jay was a mathematician working over the numbers, calculating and recalculating probability and percentage success of a myriad of potential alliances as he trekked down the beach at sunset or collected snails off boulders in the water or awaited sleep to take him where the moon hung high in the cloudless sky. 

These calculations always led to the same answer: Jay’s best option would be to create a trans-tribal alliance. It was a viable possibility and maybe he was stupid, but he was really starting to think he could maybe trust Mike. Jay might have known Mike better than some of the people he hung around with at Sundarata, actually. Gillian didn’t like to talk about anything other than the game. Vince was notoriously distant. Zoe kept her personal life hidden, though Jay was beginning to suspect she came from money and that she was playing the game more like a trophy hunter than an act of desperation like Jay was after she had let it slip that she’d once fallen off her father’s boat at their lakehouse.

Jay needed the money. Mike needed the money. Patty needed the money. He was sure Rich and Jim and Gillian all needed the money.

That was when Jay thought up the idea of creating a Sundarata-Verata alliance purely for the intention of ruling the game once the merge happened. If he could formally align himself with Mike and bring together the people he was ‘close’ with and Mike was ‘close’ with on his side even before Sundarata and Verata ever began living on the same beach, well then, no one would see it coming.

It was midday when Jay and Survivor Mom went off into the jungle to refill their canteens. Patty was fretting over him, saying she didn’t think it was all that smart that he kept going to Exile.

“You’re getting so skinny!” Patty admonished.

“It’s to be expected,” Jay said. “We’re not exactly eating feasts everyday.”

“Yes, but have someone else go to Exile. It doesn’t always have to be you. It’s unfair, Jay, that you should have to sit out there all alone.”

“I’m not alone.” A small smile tugged at his lips before he could stop himself. “I kinda like it, actually. It’s a break from everything here. Mike’s good company too.”

“And who is this Mike?” Patty asked, motherly protectiveness trickling into her tone. “He’s a good boy?”

“He’s great, don’t worry.” Jay’s expression shifted to one of deep consideration. “Yeah, he’s… I think I have a plan, actually.”

“A plan?” Patty asked. “What plan?” Jay looked around, and upon deeming it safe, began to explain. 

“A merge is going to come eventually.. We need the numbers when we go into it, right?”

“We need to start winning some challenges, then,” Patty laughed. “We start sending the other tribe home and we can stay Sundarata strong when the merge happens.”

“No, no,” Jay whispered vehemently, unprepared for the possibility that she would be so loyal to this rinky-dink tribe that questionable at best. “Listen, I don’t think there’s any ‘Sundarata strong.’ They’ll backstab us as soon as we get to the merge. They’re the type to play the game for themselves. They’ll be flipping allegiance like  _ that-- _ ” Jay snapped his fingers. 

“You think?”

“Pshh, of course. I mean, Matt?” Jay scoffed. “No way is he sticking with us. I’m just thinking about the merge. It’s coming. And if we can make it,” Jay said, “then we can join up with Mike.”

“You trust him that much? You’re that close to him?” Patty asked. She looked suspicious, but Jay couldn’t possibly explain how much he really meant it. 

“Yeah,” he said, “you just need to meet him is all. But if we can team up with Mike and whoever is in his alliance, and we have  _ our  _ alliance, then we could pick off whoever’s left because we’ll have all the power.”

“That sounds perfect.” Patty was beaming. “Ooh, I’m excited!”

She took his hand and swung it side to side in celebration. Jay smiled; it was a rather good plan wasn’t it? 

Here was to hoping it would all work out.

* * *

His name was Tim. 

Everyone knew this because he referred to himself as ‘Big Tim’ during challenges, usually as loud as he possibly could. Tim was by far the most eccentric and the most cocky player on Verata and Jay counted it as a magnificent stroke of luck that he had not been forced to live on a beach with him.

“There’s pretty much nothing I’m bad at,” Tim said after having won a reward challenge for his tribe by throwing a ball through a hoop and then solving a slide puzzle. Verata chuckled politely. Sundarata glowered in their once again failure. 

That day, Verata made off with a whole crate of fresh breads and pastries and a bag of ground coffee, but not without Tim throwing the losing tribe a peace sign and an obnoxious expression fit with a tongue extended out from under his bushy mustache.

“What an ass,” Zoe said. They were sitting back at camp and around the fire, dreaming of breakfast pastries and hot, delicious coffee.

“Do you think he’ll make it to the merge?” Jay asked. 

“I sure hope not,” Gillian said.

Sundarata hummed their agreement and spent the rest of the afternoon in silence.

This time when they walked into the challenge, there was not a swell of treats and caffeinated beverages awaiting them but rather a statue of a demonic-looking monkey sitting on a pedestal beside where Jeff stood. Its carved expression was playfully and perhaps evilly contorted, its wooden tongue bitten between its sharp teeth.

“This is what you covet.” Jeff patted the top of the statue’s head. “The immunity idol. This will keep you safe from tribal council, where the losing tribe will be voting someone out of this game. Ready to get to it?”

The three strongest players from each tribe stood atop a wooden crate each. Representing Sundarata, Jim, Vince and Rusty. Verata’s choices came in the form of a woman named Katherine, Tim and, of course, Mike. They each held a wooden bar atop their shoulders, their wrists draped over it. All they had to do was stay standing. The seven remaining players on each tribe were tasked with deciding who they would be administering two, ten pound sandbags to either end of their chosen opponent’s pole.

“Sundarata won the coin toss,” Jeff said. “Where are you sending the first two bags?”

Gillian pointed, speaking without consulting the tribe for the second time, the first having been when she suggested Rusty take the third spot beside Jim and Vince. “Mike.”

Jay looked at her. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been expecting it; Mike was the largest one atop the lineup of six crates, but still, Jay’s anxiety spiked, his breath drawing in a fraction faster before returning his gaze to Mike just in time to see Zoe and Matt dropping twenty pounds on him. Mike didn’t even so much as readjust himself; he stood strong, a smug smirk tweaking the corner of his lips upward.

It went on like this, back and forth. It was easy enough in the beginning that they set to teasing the other team and trash-talking. But as the weight became more evenly distributed and heavier, they quieted and the jabs they could manage bit with curt frustration. Tim was the only one continuing on; Jay wasn’t sure if he ever stopped talking.

“C’mon, add some more! Yeah!”

Tim’s tribemates flinched at his explosive volume and the sweat flying off of him, but said nothing.

Twenty pounds turned to forty turned to eighty turned to one hundred.

“Hold in there, Russ,” Zoe murmured as a woman named Heather and a man, who Jay knew through Mike as Rich, deposited another twenty pounds to the pole digging into his narrow shoulders. “Tim’s loud but he’s shaky.”

Katherine had dropped, as had Vince and Jim, who were now holding their sore shoulders on the sidelines. Tim and Mike remained, facing off against the slim, parkour-kid holding Sundarata’s fate atop his narrow shoulders.

Mike was the biggest guy on Verata and was their one true hope in winning this challenge. This also made him the biggest target in the collective eyes of Sundarata, sans Jay who was feeling strangely… what was the word? 

_ Empathetic. _

That unexpected wriggling in his guts had him confusingly conflicted about damning his Exile Island companion with more sandy weight. Mike had initially taken it with grace, but that was twenty, forty, sixty pounds ago. Now he was pushing two hundred and he was pouring sweat, shaking, gritting his teeth painfully hard as his back bent forward for any kind of relief.

Wasn’t it scary, Jay thought, that seeing Mike so pulled to his limit had him forgetting this was a game. He was compelled to look away, wanted to spare himself the sight of the man who had kept him laughing on Exile and who had stroked his thumb so gently when he now looked so pained. Jay shook his head; he couldn’t fall into that trap. A million reality television stars had said it before and he was saying it internally now—he was not here to make friends. 

Winning a million dollars would make him feel better, anyway.

Tim dropped the pole off his shoulders with an ear-splitting yell sounding like that of victory, never mind his failure laying in a heap on the ground behind him. 

“It has come down to Rusty and Mike,” Jeff said. “There is nowhere to hide.”

It was Jay’s turn to pick up a sandbag from the pile on the ground. It was heavy in his hands, feeling more like fifty pounds as he trudged hesitantly over to Mike. Jay stepped up on the footstool positioned at the side of Mike’s crate. Standing so close to him, Jay could see just how flushed Mike was with the effort. His jaw was tight. His entire body was vibrating, nostrils flaring when the involuntary movement shifted the weight on his shoulders and the back of his neck slightly so he felt it anew. Sweat percolated on his skin and was absorbed by his dark blue shirt, much dirtier than the last time Jay had seen it. 

Mike’s eyes slid over to his right. Jay stared back, unblinking and unaware of the slight frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. Mike gave a pained smirk and the slightest of nods, as if he were saying,  _ It’s okay. Do it. _

Their shared gaze did not break as Jay threaded the end of the pole through the loop of rope at the top of the bag and pushed it forward, feather-light, to join the many others.

“Rusty’s holding one hundred and twenty pounds. Mike’s at one-eighty.”

The cords of Mike’s neck pulled even tighter, pronounced just under the veil of black stubble that drew Jay’s eyes like a moth to light. It didn’t even look like Mike and Rusty knew they were facing off against each other. They were too busy battling independently with their own bodies to stay standing.

Sore muscles straining, the drip of sweat and saliva— one hundred and twenty pounds hit the ground as Rusty was finally brought to his knees. 

“Verata wins immunity!”

Verata cheered. Tim screamed a drawn out wail of triumph. Mike dropped his pole and then onto his knees, in the same state as Rusty, who could not muster the strength to stand.

“I’m sorry, guys.” Rusty was panting, a pained expression rippling across his face. He hung his head and braced his hands on the crate’s wood, darker in patches with a troubling amount of sweat. “I tried, I—... I couldn’t hold on.”

“It’s okay, buddy.” Jim held a hand on his shoulder. “You did your best.”

Doing one’s best did not save them from tribal council, though. Sundarata walked down their beach at sunset and boarded a boat transporting them to a nearby island housing an ominous, black rock structure. Flame flickered atop the stout candles strewn about the rather spooky looking arena, each of them spilling over with white or red wax. It was night by this time and the only true light was that coming from the large fire pit at the center of this circular, open-air room where a body of fire huge as a tiger ate away at the fat logs in it. 

Each member of Sundarata stood in front of their assigned stone stool, silent and apprehensive for what tonight would hold.

“Behind each of you is a torch.” Jeff stood in front of a wooden podium, hands clasped behind his back. “Grab it and approach the flame. Dip it in and get fire.” They submerged the ends of their torches in the bath of fire, the heat rolling over their sweaty faces and the light blinding them momentarily. They returned their torches to the holes in the ground behind their seats. 

“This is part of the ritual of tribal council because in this game, fire represents your life. When your fire is gone, so are you."

Jay sighed tensely. Here went nothing.

They were bombarded with questions by the show’s host which they answered as diplomatically as possible, or up until they were asked about how they were holding up individually at which point they were a little bit more open because it was fine to dog on yourself rather than other people.

They were asked how they were acclimating to the change of scenery  _ (generally a shock and on occasion, miserable), _ what they thought of the challenges  _ (harder than they seemed) _ , who was to trust  _ (it was too early to tell) _ , who to keep around  _ (depended on who you asked) _ , what their strategy was  _ (oh, you! That’s private!) _ . Were they to keep the strongest players around or were they ready to move onto the more psychological gameplay?

“Survivor is like a game of chess,” Jim said and Jay thought that sounded about right. “It’s not about what the pieces are but how they’re used.”

“Rusty,” Jeff asked, “do you feel like you let your tribe down today?”

Rusty shrugged in a kid kind of way, but he looked guilty anyway. “Kinda? I dunno. It doesn’t make sense.” Rusty’s brow pinched together. “I don’t understand why they picked me to compete today. I mean, they could’ve picked Matt. Just look at him! He’s at least four inches taller than me and way stronger. I told them… I told them I’d rather not compete but they told me it should be me up there. It’s almost like they wanted me to lose.”

And Gillian made her intentions uncomfortably clear when she asked him slyly, “When’d you get so smart?”

The look on Rusty’s face almost made Jay sick.

That night they did away with Rusty. He was a warrior but he couldn’t go much farther with them. Rusty was a beam of light and if he got any further in this game, he would surely outshine all of them. This was only half of the dilemma, however, when considering Rusty’s future in this game. The other half was that they all had rather intense reservations about awarding a newly twenty-one year old a million dollars. And Rusty deserved to win as of now, what with his impeccable challenge performances and his admirable social skills.

“You’re such a good kid,” had been Jay’s whispered message as he held up his vote for Rusty to the camera in the wall of the claustrophobic voting booth, “and that’s why I can’t let you win. Not right now, anyway.”

Jay knew what he would have done with a million dollars if he was twenty-one. He would have bought an apartment in LA and funded an indie film of some amazing script he had yet to write. Then he would have bought things he didn’t need and gone on trips to places that would make him appear well-traveled and would have made vapid strangers his friends by purchasing them expensive alcohol and he would have done whatever they told him to do because he had been weak back then and just wanted to be accepted, loved.

Sometimes Jay still felt like that kid but he’d never admit it.

* * *

Rusty’s vote out had made everything seem real all of a sudden.

Their fates in this game were all balanced on a razor’s edge. Their futures depended entirely on one another. Rusty hadn’t been so lucky and even more, he hadn’t seen it coming. Maybe he had a miniscule hunch in the way he had admitted his suspicion about the lot of them, a hypothesis previously buried at the back of his mind-- _ It’s almost like you wanted me to lose. _

Everyone was beginning to look a little different. The shadows they cast were a little longer, their silence a little more still. Make no mistake, this was what they were here for. They only needed this sour reminder of Rusty’s absence to remember what was required of them. 

They had been thinking about getting out a too-young candidate for the prize money when they had voted last but hadn’t been thinking about how life at camp would be without someone younger and more agile around.

Rusty had been the sole provider of fruit. He had no problem climbing up tall trees, the machete handle bitten between his teeth as he ascended. Now the fruit seemed far too high above the ground for any of them to retrieve it. 

Jay sat on a log by the campfire while the rest of his tribemates flitted in and out around him. A flat piece of bark was balanced atop his sandy knees. The machete blade was comically large in his hands, looking deadly as Jay innocently diced up bits of coconut atop his makeshift cutting board. 

Everyone had been a bit irritated with the lack of food recently, so they decided to make ‘coconut popcorn.’ They had found when they chopped up coconut and fried it, the pieces softened to a fluffy, popcorn-like texture. It was a big hit and after an increase in bickering and growling stomachs, Jay had taken it upon himself to whip some up. Patty tended to the fire and put the pot on, heating it in anticipation for the first heap of uncooked coconut. 

Jay’s mind wandered in the mundanity of the task. The sound of the chopping was hypnotic and soon enough he was drifting in and out of thoughts before settling on those vivid glimpses of Exile in his mind’s eye; starry skies and soft sand and Mike. 

Jay still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened that night. That didn’t imply he regretted it, being so open with someone and actively reaching for them. He didn’t think he did, anyway. 

He remembered the feeling of Mike’s hand in his, the roughness of his skin and the warmth of his palm. How was it that Mike hadn’t pulled away? Jay was convinced at some capacity that this was an act of mercy, saving Jay from complete embarrassment until he remembered the way Mike had stroked his thumb with his own. 

He hadn’t felt this confused in a while, then felt some kind of embarrassment for being so confused when a little touch like that obviously meant nothing.

Vince pulling a long piece of bamboo across the sand to his left caught Jay’s attention. 

“What’s he doing with that?” Jay asked, turning his head and watching as Vince disappeared through the green veil of the jungle’s edge.

“Vince said Matt needed it for something,” Patty said with a shrug.

“For what?”

“Who knows. Go check and make sure they aren’t doing anything stupid.” Patty took the machete from him and scooped up the cubes of coconut onto the flat side of the blade. She dropped them into the pot with a puff of steam and a constant sizzling. “I got this, honey; you don’t have to worry about it.”

The jungle was cool but Matt’s attitude was hot. The stick of bamboo that had been in Vince’s hand was now in Matt’s as he used it to jab meters high above at one tree’s branches. The blunt end of the bamboo flirted with two, green football-shaped fruits at the highest reach: breadfruit.

Before coming here, Jay didn’t even know such a fruit existed with its bumpy exterior and soft insides. Rusty had been the one to lope into camp with two tucked in his arms and one sandwiched beneath his chin. Jay had tasted it and suddenly developed a new craving for something other than bland rice. 

Matt growled his frustration at failing to dislodge the delicious fruit free. He vaulted the bamboo stick away.

“I’m fucking starving!” Matt yelled. Everyone around him glanced at each other with an unspoken annoyance.

“We’re cooking popcorn right now,” Jay said in hopes of calming him down. 

“I need more than popcorn, dude. Now move.” 

Jim grabbed Jay by the tail of the shirt and pulled him out of the way before Matt could bulldoze him on the way to the offending tree. 

“Are you—You’re not climbing that tree, are you? That’s so stupid, Matt.” Zoe turned to her fellow tribemates. “Tell him he’s so stupid.”

“This is stupid, man,” Jim said and they all nodded warily along in agreement. 

Matt stepped around all of them despite their pleading that he remain safe on the ground. He was motivated by his hunger alone as he began up the ridged trunk of the tree. The tree was just leaning enough that the initial ascent was rather doable but as his distance increased from the ground, Matt began to slow and slip slightly down.

“Maybe we should’ve kept around Rusty,” Vince murmured to those on the ground as they all stared up at the disgruntled banker.

Matt took hold of a pale branch with his right hand. The leaves trembled and all those on the ground’s eyebrows twitched upward, their breath drawing in quickly but they kept quiet; Matt would not hear them anyway. Matt released a hopeful breath past his smile, looking like a madman surely as he grinned up at the breadfruit. He shifted his bodyweight and prepared to pull himself up on the branch.

A crack ripped through the air. It happened so suddenly how the branch in Matt’s hand was no longer attached to the trunk. Sundarata all exclaimed some swear or gasp at the same time but were powerless to stop this. The branches at the lower reach of the tree were sparse but luckily Matt avoided them in his fall. 

He landed on his back in a thick bush of long, soft leaves. Sticks and leaves rained over him in the immediate aftermath. Matt groaned.

If Sundarata had turned around just then, they might have noticed that the cameramen were peeking nervously above their viewfinders for the first time but Sundarata was entirely too-focused on their hungry companion now laying in a green bed of foliage. 

They neared him cautiously with their hands clasped over their mouths and their breath still coming short. 

“I’m good,” Matt said, breathless but greatly unscathed.

“You sure?” Jim asked cautiously. 

Matt gave a tight nod and a thumbs-up. Matt shifted, winced.

“Just… gonna lay there for a bit?” Jay asked. 

“Yup.” He sighed heavily and stared up at the underside of the trees where the ripe, unmoved breadfruit taunted him. 

“I think this is a lesson that we should make friends with our hunger,” Vince said in a wise old way. “It’s not a war we’re gonna win, not when we have so little already.”

They all hummed their agreement. If Matt could have disappeared into the earth to save himself the embarrassment, he just might have. But he couldn’t and most definitely saw Zoe turning on her heel and narrowing her eyes, murmuring down at him,  _ “Dumbass.” _

* * *

Failure was definitely an option for Sundarata, just not the preferred one. This was especially true considering they were playing for immunity again; after the traumatizing backstabbing of Rusty, Sundarata was keen on winning safety. 

Jay, Gillian and Matt bobbed upon rolling ocean waves in a small wooden boat at high noon. The four larger members of the tribe waded neck deep in the water ahead of them, connected to the boat’s bow by ropes knotted around their chests. They kind of resembled a team of reindeer or snow dogs ready to pull the paddle-less sea vessel to victory. 

Matt would have been in the water but his recent slip-up had made tender his ankle, which was bruised slightly and puffy at the joint. It was just on the edge of being bad, meaning Matt would have to rest and stay as much off of it like he was now or risk it becoming a bigger problem.

They were all nervous that one of the stronger members of the tribe was out of commission this time around but were too determined to let it impact their efforts.

A puzzle awaited them on a large platform far ahead of them along with their two remaining tribemates. At the moment, the puzzle blocks were held captive in pirate-y looking trunks with bulky locks on the front. The keys to these locks were held high above the water on a tower marking halfway between where they were now and the puzzle. Jay swallowed. The height of these towers was rather daunting from where he sat. They were easily twenty feet in the air and even then, the keys were held some ways out in front of and above the narrow plank they would have to step out on. 

They’d have to leap off the tower to grab them. The fall would be long.

Mike was in the water for his tribe. A rope was wrapped tight around his bare chest as he waded in the water. Jay could see him even from here with the aid of the breathtakingly clear water like a transparent veil. The sun was high above them but Jay’s cheeks went a fraction warmer than before when Mike’s eyes met his, something playful glinting in his gaze. 

“C’mon, Verata!” Tim yelled into his cupped hands where he sat on a small bench on a nearby platform beside Jeff. Given Sundarata’s most recent loss, a member of Verata was required to sit out to make the numbers on both tribes even. Tim had volunteered. “Let’s send them to tribal again! Let’s go!”

Somewhere in the water, exasperated huffs from Sundarata.

Jeff raised a hand. “Survivors ready?”

Both tribes went silent and set their sights on victory.

_ “Go!” _

The boat jolted forward. Jay clung to the edge when it rocked with the effort. The members of Sundarata in the water, led by Jim, moved with all the frustration that came with being frequent losers. They had something to prove and Jay feared what they might do if their best efforts weren’t enough this time around.

The boat arrived at the green-painted tower at the same time Verata arrived at their red-painted one meters to their right. 

“Gillian getting the key for Sundarata,” Jeff commentated as Gillian jumped out of the boat and pulled herself up on the base of the tower.

She scaled the wooden ladder so fast that her foot slipped on one of the rungs with an audible thud. She hissed, cursed, but continued quickly up, only slowing as she stepped out on the plank. Gillian teetered slightly to one side but recovered, sliding forward cautiously. 

Jay sucked in a breath when Gillian finally jumped. 

The tip of her fingers skimmed the bottom of the dangling key, but it was just enough to knock it from the hook and into her hand. Jay watched in abject horror as Gillian then careened toward the water seemingly miles beneath her, a fall lasting long enough for him to count its duration in his head and still have time to take a breath between accumulating seconds. He flinched from the violent splash as Gillian finally hit the water. 

The splash was more than a splash; ‘splash’ made it sound innocent. Her entry was like a monster of white water seizing out of the ocean. Gillian emerged, thankfully, at the center of the settling storm but sputtered in shock, somewhat weak in paddling back to the  boat.

“Gillian with a key for Sundarata!” Jeff announced. “Gotta hurry up if they wanna stay in this; Verata’s already on their last key!”

Jay and Matt pulled Gillian back into the boat. As soon as she was seated, Gillian cradled her foot in her hand. She opened the tight grip of her fingers to reveal a trickle of blood coming forth from a cut just beneath her toes.

“Shit,” Jay said, “are you okay?” 

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Gillian winced, fingers closing up around her toes again. She shook her head. “I don’t think I can jump anymore.”

Jay didn’t have time to think this out; it was his turn to go. He steadied himself with a shaky breath and stepped onto the platform and scaled the ladder.

Everyone looked so small up here. He could barely hear Jeff commentating from below. Jay never thought himself afraid of heights but he was suddenly shaky and short-breathed, eyes too frequently focused on his feet as he stepped out onto the plank rather than on the key that seemed impossibly far away.

He knew this would be a problem. Jay was 5’4” to Jim’s at least 6’3”; it would be a slight reach for Jim up here but for Jay, it was a full on leap and even then he’d be struggling to make contact. 

It was too late to make a substitution now.

This was all on Jay.

Jay jumped. He didn’t even get close to the key. He was weightless for a single long second and then gravity wrapped its hand around his body and hurled him toward the water, but not before catching his foot on the very edge of the plank. Jay flipped and he was sent in the direction of the water head first.

Jay’s face hit the water before the rest of him did. 

The world was muffled, his ears ringing. Water flooded his sinuses with a salty burn. The last bit of air that had not been knocked out of him bulged in his sore throat. 

Jay pushed out of the vast depths and into deafening commotion. The bridge of his nose throbbed like he’d just been punched. He coughed up a mouthful of water and blinked fat droplets of saltwater from his eyelashes.

“You got this, Jay! Let’s go!”

But Jay didn’t want to go again. Fuck that. He went to the boat which was still stalled immediately beside the tower. He began to feebly pull himself up but Gillian’s toe was still bleeding in the bottom of the boat in a growing puddle of watery crimson and Matt wasn’t able to jump. 

Jay was too winded to argue and the persistence of the four still floating in the water was pressure enough to lead him back to the tower despite his best wishes. 

Jay steadied himself as best he could at the top. He bent his knees a little and leaped upward. 

His hands scrabbled at the air for literally any purchase, but his grip came up short. He crashed into the water. Bubbles of the churned water wrapped around him and robbed him of sight and air. He breached the surface with a gasp and a legitimate frown of disappointment upon looking at the untouched key hanging mockingly above him.

“Jay misses  _ again! _ ” Jeff said. “This is an absolute  _ disaster  _ for Sundarata!”

Verata was already on the far platform unlocking their trunks and taking out puzzle pieces to be fitted in a hollow, vertical frame. Mike was out there with his bare chest heaving from the hard swim and his huge hands on his hips. He shot a concerned glance over his shoulder at Jay who was once again trying to pull himself up on the tower’s platform but slipped, falling back into the water. 

“C’mon, Jay!” Brianna called. “C’mon, baby, this is it!”

“I’m trying,” Jay coughed, sounding like a sob, as he struggled to crawl up the ladder.

Every breath was glass in his lungs. His mouth was open. The taste of salt clung overwhelmingly to his tongue and a strand of drool dangled off his bottom lip as he panted for relief. 

Somewhere below, Tim cheered at his tribe’s progress. 

“Yeah!” Tim clapped loudly. “No way is he getting the other key! Keep going!” 

Jay hobbled down the plank now familiar under his feet. Below, voices encouraged him on with called strategies of how he should jump, how he should grasp for the key. But they weren’t up here. Jay was up here, on display, all alone.

Strangely, this felt like a metaphor for his entire life. 

It was just a bunch of rabble from people telling him how things should be done, how he needed to try, try harder, c’mon he could do it. But couldn’t they see that he was already trying so hard? He was falling apart because he was trying so hard but he kept failing and couldn’t someone just help him?

Why did no one help him,  ever?

His dad had tried to help him in his own fucked up way, with half-drunken, one-sided conversations in which he preached the “responsibilities of men.” That meant doing things you didn’t want to do and to do it all, not with a smile on your face, but with a growing resentment in your heart. You would drown that feeling in beer and hard liquor and you would never cry because men were not supposed to be alive in that way.

His brothers had not helped at all. They were nothing but motivation to further alienate himself from his family. They were everything Jay wasn’t and they did not want to learn to understand him, didn’t have any interest in taking the effort to try and connect with him. They had made him feel like a stranger, many times inferior, in his own home and in his room cluttered with books about movie-making and movie posters on his walls and some B-movie playing on the tiny TV in the corner, he had really felt like a guest in this house where everyone else made him feel like something was wrong with him for liking what he liked.

And his mother; she didn’t even know he needed help. 

She was barely ever around. When she was, she was quick with judgment but had never considered what it meant to the young boy who hadn’t seen his mother in eight days, excited to show her his latest claymation project. 

Jay hid his interests like a horrible secret after discouraging comments from infrequent parental figures about how he needed to stop being so strange, how he needed to make more friends, and didn’t he see that he was making it hard for people to like him? She said it like it shouldn’t have hurt. She said it like he was supposed to receive the information like a robot, emotionless and without any offense. 

Once, his parents had fought because of him. Jay’s mother accused his father of not raising Jay right and how she was so tired and just wanted to relax and now she had to worry about her son growing up to be a “weirdo.” Jay’s father was unhappy to be labeled the sole reason for their son’s antisocial attitude and snapped back with the fact she was never around, and that raising Jay was a full-time, and pretty much thankless, job.

They had fought all night and Jay was shaky in bed, too anxious to sleep, too afraid, too guilty for ruining everything again. He had been upset enough the next morning to take the Fangoria magazines he hid under his bed and burn them out in the forest behind his home. 

It had been like burning a piece of himself he hated. This piece caused problems and made him an outsider in the one place he should never have to feel unwanted or like a burden. And he hadn’t cried over that pile of ash but wandered back home with a heaviness in the soles of his feet, his hoodie sleeves fallen past his hands and the metal grip of the lighter biting into his palm.

It had felt like an absolute slap across his face then when Jay came in through the backdoor and into the kitchen, only to find his mother and father already reconciled and behaving as if nothing had happened. It was comical, really, how he couldn’t even be with them in their anger and in their mourning over how he was growing into someone none of them recognized.

Jay wondered why he had gotten so unlucky in the family department. Had he done something terrible in a past life to warrant punishment in this one? Was he learning something? Or had it all been for nothing?

Here was the scariest thought and it was so grim because it was ultimately the truth of the situation— sometimes that was just the way life was. 

Jay was not a terrible person. He had merely been a child with unconventional but harmless interests. He had been born different and these people sharing his blood did not know how to love ‘different,’ did not know how to really care about anything outside of what they considered normal. Normal, as in corporate jobs that sucked your soul and relationships entered into out of pressure and definitely not love, and cookie cutter homes plagued with HOA fees and no history, and secrets and repression and nothing ever real, no dreams, no will to  _ live _ —

Jay jumped.

He couldn’t hear anyone up here, just the wind in his ears. The sunlight made clearer the water, sparkling down below and making the key glitter. He was so so close, and then, Jay’s fingers wrapped around the gold tip of the key and this time he didn’t really mind the strong jaws of the water swallowing him up, as long as he had that key in his hand. 

The two in the boat grabbed him by his slippery biceps and pulled him up.

“Go!” they yelled.

The four at the head of the boat tore through the water, long arms cutting through the waves and strong legs kicking in a frenzy and they were pulling the boat at a much faster speed than they had been going initially. They landed on the last platform like they were pirates pulling up on a city of gold. Their boat collided with the side of it and Sundarata didn’t even wait for the boat to come to a standstill; they were already hurrying off, and in Jay’s case, being helped up and out of their tiny vessel. 

The keys he had acquired were no longer in his possession but in the agile hands of those whose energy had yet been sapped entirely. The bulky metal locks popped open. Puzzle blocks were strewn across the floor in their designated area.

Only two people were allowed to work on the puzzle and thankfully two people that were not Jay stepped up to the plate. Verata had yet to finish their puzzle and were stalling at around seventy-five percent completion, looking back and forth from the puzzle to the spare pieces at their feet with panicked confusion.

“Verata is blowing their lead,” Jeff said. “Sundarata working  quickly.”

One piece slid in. Then two. Three. Four. Five. 

“Sundarata has caught up! Verata looking on in absolute  _ shock _ as their lead completely disappears.”

The rabble from the other tribe increased in volume as those not doing the puzzle ordered for this piece to go there and move that piece around and look, look where I’m pointing! But Sundarata kept their cool under pressure.

Jay was so exhausted he could barely stand. His shoulders were slouched. His mouth was open and his brow was still tented with the throbbing of his blood through his tingling muscles. There were only three pieces of the puzzle left and they each had their own place and it was so clearly seen. Verata didn’t matter right now when this puzzle that dictated how their lives in this game fit exactly just so.

Patty slid in the last piece. Jeff’s hands shot up.

“In an astounding comeback, Sundarata wins immunity and sends Verata to tribal council where tonight one of them will be voted out of this game!”

Jay couldn’t believe it. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen in his body but he really couldn’t process what had just happened. They were all cheering without restraint, hugging, and kissing each other on the cheeks and Jay’s hands were on either side of his head as he leaned against Jim’s chest, eyes focused on nothing and the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

They did it.  _ He _ did it. 

They were safe, if only for tonight.

It was total bliss, and just like the puzzle, everything in Jay’s present and past seemed to all fit together. This victory momentarily erased the sting of all the failures and shortcomings in his past and it was so weird how much it mattered to him and at such a level.

Jay was proud of himself.

The tribe gladly accepted the immunity idol. Jay looked over at smoldering Verata, of whom were downtrodden and unbelieving of their defeat. Tim could be seen fuming with his arms crossed and his jaw set at his bench. Mike looked disappointed at some capacity but was looking at Jay, a smile reflected in the twitch of the corner of his mouth and in the twinkle of his eyes.

Given that Jay was their champion—a label that both greatly embarrassed and flattered him—Jay was allowed the privilege of riding on Jim’s back once they were back on the beach. He was dead weight on Jim’s hulking frame, his cheek pressed to the warm skin of Jim’s sunburnt shoulder and his eyelids falling closed despite his best efforts to be present. 

The sun was warm on his damp body and threatened to lull him to sleep. Jay was just nodding off when he heard Matt saying somewhere behind him, “Breaking news, radio listeners! Jay avenges Sundarata and sends Verata to tribal; some would call him our hero!”

* * *

Pieces started unraveling. Ends began fraying. 

Their most frequent win should have been a sign of easier days to come, but sitting around without any tribal council to attend provided more opportunity to overthink every little thing. 

Sundarata was sitting around camp in a thick haze of fatigue brought on by demanding physical labor and a rather thin diet now sans breadfruit. Some days they could barely summon the effort to move their tongues, but Patty filled in the silences for them.

She talked about home, family, the land she hoped to buy and what kind of animals she’d have on her farm. They would nod and listen with genuine interest, of which spiked considerably when she slipped into speaking of her fellow tribemates. Patty addressed the events of the day and the struggles of living out here and  _ hey _ , did you know one of the best places to talk was out in the jungle, because the leaves and the branches were so dense that you couldn’t really hear the roaring of the ocean. She and Jay had just gone out there to talk earlier today and she showed no hesitation at saying this part out loud. 

What felt like a hundred eyes snapped toward Jay. 

Their silence begged Patty to continue. Jay tried his best to seem unaffected by this reveal but a nervous sweat was prickling at the back of his neck and under his arms. Thankfully Jim swooped in with a smooth change in subject and a refusal to acknowledge the information just divulged. Everyone moved on, but it was certain no one would soon forget what had been said.

Jay had never done well with confrontation. He was either all in or all out—there was no in between. It was either apathy ruling his interactions with his fellow coworkers or the rare occurrence of his whole-hearted involvement, which had manifested twice before  as a  loudly-expressed disdain for having to pick up after one his coworkers who thought it was better to get high on company time than it was to actually pull his own weight. Jay was torn between which way it would go when Patty was unknowingly threatening their secret alliance.

The difficulty here was that Jay was the one with the special relationship with Patty. They didn’t understand what Patty meant to Jay. Jim and Gillian were not as convinced of Patty’s trustworthiness and were not as interested in her outside of the power she held in her vote. Jay had yet to tell them about just how close he was with Mike and how Mike’s friends could almost certainly become their friends in the ally sense, but thought if he were to do so right now, their opinions of Patty might sink even deeper.

Fondness and recognition of the maternal had brought down Jay’s towering defenses and only now was he beginning to wonder if he’d made a mistake. 

There was no time to dwell on it right now; he needed his mind clear to win this challenge.

Jay was a lot better with mental games rather than physical ones, so he felt some kind of relief when they arrived at the immunity challenge only to find individual podiums awaiting them rather than some huge obstacle course of dreaded towers out in the ocean. 

“I will be showing you a series of symbols.” Jeff held a large block in his hands and turned to give sight to a different illustration on each of its six faces. “You will repeat them back to me using the block given to you with the same symbols. Each round, the list of symbols will get longer. Whichever tribe is the last standing wins immunity. Let’s get started.”

Jay aced the first few rounds effortlessly while Sundarata fell off one by one. Verata too had trouble remembering the order of each random image. It went on like this until one member from each tribe remained. Jay looked over at Rich. So Rich was smart, huh? Good with puzzles at least. In a game like this, Jay was finding that perhaps smarts and cleverness might outweigh any physical advantage. It was a good investment then to surround oneself with smart allies. 

Jay gave the tiniest smirk.  _ Good work, Mike. _

“This will be our longest list of symbols yet,” Jeff announced. “Pay close attention.”

The symbols were easy to keep up with at the beginning but they soon began blurring together, the list of them tangling in Jay’s mind in an incomprehensive mess, confusing him further when he looked down at the block in his hand in search of what he’d just heard.

Jay was feeling the pressure now but Rich was unbothered. He maybe even looked bored.

Rich looked over at Jay. He smiled, and Jay might have thought it was in reference to the game at hand but no, there was something else knowing in his gaze. It was like he knew something Jay didn’t.

Jay’s brow knitted together. He swallowed.

“Each one of you has a different answer on what comes next in this list. Only one of you is right.” This was item twelve, skull to Jay but anchor to Rich. Both remaining players didn’t do so much as move a muscle. “The right answer is...”

Jeff revealed his block. 

“Anchor.” Jay’s face fell. Verata cheered and whooped while Sundarata sat silently on the sidelines. “That means Sundarata will be meeting with me once again to vote off a member of their tribe,” Jeff said.

Thankfully no one meandered around Jay trying to convince him that he’d done his best and how that was all they could ask. They returned to camp without niceties and instead set to work scheming on who the axe would fall on next.

Near evening, it would seem the camp was split between two players. Jay listened to arguments made in favor of each of them, made in secret of course and behind those players’ backs, never once voicing his own opinion but just taking it all in, saying simply when questioned about where his mind was at, “I have to think.” 

Jay went with Jim to collect firewood. They walked down a dirt path leading into the jungle and further away from camp. Once he was sure they were alone, Jay finally, and solemnly, voiced his ponderings. 

He explained that what he had experienced so far was rough enough. Existing successfully was surprisingly taxing in both body and mind, and Matt’s hungry tantrums were as stressful to him as Patty’s frequent slip ups of a secret alliance within the Sundarata tribe.

“Do you see the difference?” Jim asked. Jay didn’t know what he meant. “Tell me which is more important--getting some silence instead of having to hear some guy with an empty stomach rant and rave, or not having your future in this game blown-up by someone who doesn’t know they’re holding the detonator.”

But Jay couldn’t do that. He asked Jim if he could if he were in Jay’s position, to which Jim exhaled deeply and said, “I don’t know your feelings. But I can see the writing on the wall, and I’m not risking it.” 

That was the worst part, that Jay was alone in this turmoil. Was it supposed to be this hard already? They’d only voted off one person. They should have had a couple more soft ball votes so they could relax. But no one won a million dollars going the easy route.

Someone tonight would have no chance of winning the million dollars at all.

“Fuck, I don’t know what to do.” Jay ran a hand through his hair. Jim drove his foot through a thick branch, the sound like that of a cracking vertebrae. 

“It's your call,” Jim said. “But you better decide quick. The sun’s almost down.”

Evening came quicker than Jay would have liked. 

They picked up their torches in the navy-violet light after the absence of the sun and marched off to the open-air pavilion some minutes away where the show’s host was waiting for them.

Once seated, they spoke of nothing of importance, mostly just their time so far together and how it differed from what they had experienced in their lives. Jay was barely listening. His mind was flipping between two possibilities of how the night would go. He just might be the swing-vote, and that was enough to make his stomach sick. 

Patty’s voice pulled Jay from the overwhelming white-noise of his racing thoughts. Jeff had just asked her if Patty had ever experienced something like this in her life, to which she answered, yes. 

“Not literally,” she said sweetly and with a laugh that beget images of warm homes and loving families. “I’ve never been out to a place like this but I’ve had my experience with plenty of difficult things in my life. This is definitely one of them, but the people I’ve met here have just been…” She trailed off with a small smile. “That’s what I’ve learned in life: the people are what matter. If I was out here alone, I guarantee you I’d be saying another story but getting to know these people has been a blessing.”

Patty gushed about them as if they were her children, and they all listened because in their own way, they all needed this. Life here was hard and reminders of their worth and spectacularness gave them enough energy to smile or just enough positivity to forget about the sunburns bubbling on their shoulders and the hunger in their bellies.

“Jay is one of the best young men I’ve ever met,” Patty said. “He was a little quiet at the start, but he’s really warmed up to all of us. I’ve seen him grow. His heart is so big and you’d know it if only you got to know him.”

Jay let himself smile weakly. He looked down. If only she knew how much it really meant to him, it would break her heart.

“Thank you,” Jay murmured and then it was time to vote.

One by one they went off to the voting booth and returned, sitting in silence as Jeff collected the voting urn. 

“I’ll read the votes.” Jeff took the lid off the urn, reached inside and pulled out a folded piece of parchment. “First vote— Matt.”

Matt gave a shake of his head and a scoff out his nose, the brute. He reminded Jay a lot of his brothers. 

Jeff pulled out the next vote, and then a third, a fourth.  _ Matt _ , they all read.

Now Matt was looking nervous. He shuffled his feet on the ground, his whole body swaying as he readjusted himself uncomfortably, a veil of panic drawn over his annoyed face. Jay’s fingers balled into a fist in his lap.

Jeff turned the next vote toward them. “Patty.”

Patty looked surprised, shocked even. Her lips parted, her brow twitched together in confusion. But it was on the second vote reading her name that she began to glance nervously around for the culprits of this mysterious new trend of votes.

Jeff pulled another, another. “Four votes Matt,” he said. “Four votes Patty. One vote left.”

Jeff reached inside of the urn and brought out the last vote. He unfolded it, paused, then presented it to them:

_ Mom :( _

Jay’s breath dragged roughly in and out of his chest. He was staring down at his knees. His tongue felt swollen and suffocating. His throat was dry. Tears were stuck somewhere behind his eyes, threatening to manifest and spill with each dazed blink. 

Patty turned to look at him with an expression of pained confusion. But Jay couldn’t look at her. 

“Five votes, that’s enough,” Jeff said. “Patty, bring me your torch.”

Patty rested a hand on Jay’s dirty knee. Jay raised his head, his breath stuttery in his chest and his jaw tight as he warded off any teary whimpers. She looked like she wanted to take him into her arms just then, Patty’s eyes reflecting a sad understanding. Patty gave Jay a warm smile and a pat to his knee before rising and it took everything for Jay to break out into tears right then.

And as Patty stood before Jeff and had the fire of her torch snuffed, Jay felt an excruciating tug at his heart as once again, his mother left him.

* * *

It was no question what was going on the third time Mike and Jay ventured to Exile together.

This time, Mike had been the one to pick Jay after Verata lost a puzzle challenge for a prize of two large pizzas, though they were supposedly cold by the time they were in the hands of the tribe. Jay couldn’t help but feel somewhat flattered and relieved at Mike having picked him, as if he actually expected Mike to choose someone else.

They were aware they were placing a target on their backs so they discussed once they arrived at Exile this time their strategy of how to cover their tracks. The defense they had settled was the one that said it wasn’t that Jay and Mike liked each other or were really hitting it off, it was a  _ strategic  _ play by Jay to rob Sundarata of a very strong player around camp and vice versa, though Jay was more apt in mental strength than physical. 

They forgot base camp this time and ventured with their bags up an increasingly dusty trail climbing in altitude. They were of the shared preference of loose sand rather than packed dirt after the glorious sleep they had achieved their last time on Exile together. It had snuck up on them that last time and they had fallen asleep with their fingers still locked together. 

They ventured to a different dune this time as if their goal was to map this place and explore every inch of it. It felt like theirs, at least for as long as they were on it, and they wanted to know it. 

Night fell in a black shade host to pinpoint light and Fiji turned to a never ending desert. 

Mike made the fire but Jay helped. He was still uncertain about the flint and its proclivity to spit sparks like a tiny dragon, but Mike had taken Jay’s hands in his own and guided them over the flint, helping him strike it at a pace faster than Jay would have previously considered.

“There you go,” Mike murmured, a shiver-inducing exhale of breath fanning over the shell of Jay’s ear. “You almost got it.” 

Jay leaned back against Mike’s front. Mike’s breathing moved him and the warmth pouring through his clothes spread from Jay’s shoulders to his lower back. Jay stared down at the thick machete blade hacking away at that little bit of flint, hot light spraying out of it. Additionally, he stared at the blatant difference of the size of their hands, Mike’s huge ones easily enveloping Jay’s. 

And then, just like that, the flame caught. Mike was more excited about it than Jay was. He laughed and Jay tilted his head back, gazing up at the sky. 

Tonight weighed heavy in Jay’s bones. He was hungry. He was tired. He was a little bit everything.

“Everything okay?” Mike asked. 

They were sitting close side by side at the edge of a dune seeming to slope far down into the depths of a dark earth. The wind was cold up here. Jay had yet to tell Mike about Patty. That vote was still haunting him and while Mike knew Patty during challenges as part of the Sundarata tribe, he didn’t know what Patty meant to him. Jay didn’t really want to get into it. He wasn’t ready.

“Thinking,” Jay murmured as he looked out on the horizon. “About the future.”

LThere was a quiet pause, nothing between them but a whistle of wind rustling their hair. “The future?” Mike asked.

“The merge. It’ll be coming up. And I was thinking, that if we make it there, we could rule this game. Together.” Jay turned to look at him. “Is that something you want?”

“Yeah,” Mike said, heartfelt. “Jay, that’s something I want.”

Why did Mike have to say it like that? Why did he have to say it like it mattered? This was just a stupid fucking game, but sometimes it didn’t feel that way because the quickening of Jay’s heart wasn’t fabricated and the coil of excitable nerves in his gut wasn’t made up.

Mike was either the most sincere person Jay had ever met or the most dastardly villain ever to play this game.

Jay searched Mike’s face, his deep brown eyes, that jawline dusted with handsome scruff always a little bit thicker than the last time Jay had seen him. Jay sighed finally, looked away with tired resignation. “I don’t know if I can trust you.”

Mike’s eyebrows tilted upward, his eyes widening slightly. The look on his face--as if he’d just been kicked--charmed Jay terribly. “Wait, you don’t— _ What?  _ Because I’m with Verata, that’s why can’t trust me? Jay, I’m with  _ you _ , one hundred percent. Are you fucking with me? What do I have to do to get you to trust me? Roll down this sand dune? Because I’ll do it.”

Mike began scooting forward to the edge of the dune. Jay shot out a hand, his fingers finding purchase on Mike’s thick forearm. 

“ _ No _ ,” and Jay laughed for the first time tonight. “No, just. Stay here.”

Mike’s expression softened at the quiet sincerity of Jay’s voice. “I’m not going anywhere,” Mike said, and Jay nodded and he felt suddenly very vulnerable.

Jay didn’t know how to say it. Trust wasn’t exactly the word, it was just… there were a lot of unknowns. In this game, in life. As much as it hurt Jay to consider it, Mike may be playing him. He had no idea what Mike was up to at the Verata camp, the same way Mike didn’t know about Jay’s camplife or his relationships with people like Patty, and all the painful betrayals that accompanied them.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea for Mike to dupe Jay; Jay wouldn’t fault him on that. To get familiar with him and talk too low and to smile too sweetly. He’d just be playing the game, and not only just playing it, but playing it well. It was about lies, wasn’t it? Because with lies, you got farther. 

And as such, it wasn’t enough to profess loyalty.

“You have to prove it.” Jay’s voice was quiet as it dawned on him.

Mike stared at Jay as if he was waiting for, anticipating, something. His gaze was intense but maintained that unique softness seemingly reserved for just him. “Tell me,” Mike said, his tone matching Jay’s. “Jay, tell me how to prove it.”

“Vote Tim out.”

Neither of them said anything for about five seconds, Mike perhaps waiting for a  _ ‘sike!’  _ but it never came. “ _ What?” _ Mike said. “Jay, no offense, but your tribe sucks at challenges. Verata’s not going to tribal anytime soon—“

“Throw the challenge.”

Mike blinked. Jay gripped Mike’s forearm, his fingers threading through his black arm hair. 

“Lose on purpose,” Jay said. “Vote him out, and I’ll know that you’re with me. Do that and I’ll take care of you.”

Mike stared down at Jay. 

Then he burst out laughing. 

Mike laughed with abandon, tearing up and holding his hands over his gut. The heat of humiliation blossomed across Jay’s cheeks.

“What’re you laughing at!? I’m serious, asshole!”

Mike coughed through another laugh before finally recovering his lost breath. “I know you are.”

“Whatever,” Jay murmured. “Forget it—“

“No, no. Hey.” Mike fingers hooked gently at the hem of Jay’s sleeve. He tugged at it lightly, the fondness in his voice matching the expression on his face. “Let me see what I can do. Okay?”

They didn’t talk about it anymore. Jay just shook his head, the feverish heat of humiliation pooling in his cheeks and Mike’s fingers, still gentle, wrapped tighter in the dirty fabric of Jay’s sleeve. Mike was smiling like he always did on Exile, with that softness in his eyes sparkling with firelight and a subdued mischievousness quirking the corner of his mouth dangerously upward. 

Jay huffed out his nostrils without so much as sparing him another glance and leaned away petulantly. He heard the airy exhale of another laugh fanning out of Mike’s nose but the fingers clinging to his sleeve left him and the cold of night was somehow colder. 

This dynamic they had, whatever it was, just came so natural and easy to them. Jay was only pretending Mike was irritating because he felt some obligation to sabotage things that were good in his life. Mike was patient and never did get his feelings hurt when Jay turned away from him.  The  patience and respect Mike had for Jay’s boundaries were surprisingly immense, and Mike barely knew him. 

In his life, Jay had been pursued by the occasional ‘nice’ guy oozing clingy desperation and bombarding him with questions whenever he got cold like, “But did I do something?” or “Why do you always do this?” or “Can you just talk to me and tell me what’s wrong?” and had even been told once after blatant rejection, “I’ll wait for you, Jay.” 

They had never gotten it even after, in some cases, years of being together or at least familiar with each other enough to fuck around. They didn’t understand the way Jay was. Maybe they didn’t care enough to really see him as he was--difficult at times, sure, but guarded out of necessity. It felt like a survival tactic for him even back home in Milwaukee.

Mike refused to trample over Jay’s independence. He didn’t demand an extensive explanation. He didn’t force Jay to play by his rules of communication or otherwise. Mike just let Jay  _ be _ however he wanted to be and he never asked Jay to be any different, because this Jay was not only enough, but completely satisfactory. 

Jay didn’t really know what to do with that. Jay also wasn’t keen on wasting his own time worrying about it, so when Mike lay down on the sand without him, Jay looked over and felt a fond flutter in his stomach at Mike’s quiet respect. 

Jay laid down next to him. Mike peeked sleepily over at him, gave him a soft smile before shutting his eyes again. 

The cold of night descended quickly. It was colder than they had felt up until now. Jay was at least six inches away from Mike’s side where he shivered on the sand, arms locked around himself, teeth chattering and chin tucked to his chest in a weak defense against the cold.

“Jay.” Mike turned onto his side. He lifted his arm. “C’mere.”

The wind blew freezing cold again and Jay decided it was more practical to scoot closer, body heat and all that. Mike accepted him against his front easily, as if Jay was meant to be there. Mike’s larger figure and rounded belly made him warmer and it was like having an electric blanket against his front. 

Jay chased the warmth. He pushed his hands against Mike’s soft chest and nudged the cold tip of his nose against his collarbone. Jay breathed in deeply and he couldn’t describe his fondness for it but it was perfect, that earthiness radiating from Mike’s skin and permeating through the cozy fibers of his t-shirt, natural and not hidden behind body spray or deodorant, a smell that was purely  _ boy.  _ In the heavy presence of toasty warmth and aromatic masculine pheromones, Jay became drunk, lightheaded. It had him feeling more comforted than horny and that revelation had Jay only now realizing how sensitive he was feeling. 

This game was getting hard. 

Deceit was running rampant now and Jay was at the heart of it on all occasions he had encountered it. First Patty. Now Tim’s future undoing. It was maybe guilt he felt, maybe fear at what he was capable or willing to do. But Jay was too tired to cry, too cold to hate himself.

He just needed someone to hold him. 

And Mike was holding him so well right now.

Jay peeked his eyes open. At the faintest detection of camera movement in his periphery, he flinched and came closer against Mike, hiding his face against his shoulder. Jay couldn’t see Mike but he could feel him move in a way that further barred him from view as Mike curled his outside shoulder forward. Mike wrapped an arm around Jay’s waist and settled his other hand on the back of Jay’s head to guide him closer. He was big and Jay’s mouth fell open against him with a shiver, a hand fisted in his shirt. And Mike assured him in whispers close to his ear so low and airy and quiet that they were mostly inaudible except for the rare,  _ “I got you,”  _ that wasn’t taken away by the wind.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any questions about Survivor, want some Survivor season recommendations or just want to say hi, come talk to me over on tumblr at @marasamoon


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